


Never Better

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adoribull - Freeform, Ficlet Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:41:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 52
Words: 44,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5081567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year's worth of Adoribull ficlets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dorian applies Bull's horn balm

When the wyvern had gotten a claw on his arm, Bull had known it was just a scratch. He told the boss so after the fight. Varric had taken a couple of nasty hits, and the boss was worn out on healing. Bull told her to save her mana, that the wound would keep until they got back to camp. 

And it did. The camp healer had fussed and clucked, then smeared something on it that didn’t sting at all. That’s when Bull knew he was in trouble. Stitches’s shit always burned like dragon piss, but then you were done. He told you to suck it up, maybe slapped on a bandage if it was still bleeding. By the time the Inquisition healer was done, Bull’s arm had been swaddled like a baby, and she’d forced him into a makeshift sling cut from tent canvas. He’d sighed, thanked her as politely as he could, and then headed back to the tent he shared with Dorian.

Which is how he wound up kneeling on his bedroll, jar of horn balm between his knees as he tried to work the cap open with just one hand. When the jar slipped away (again) and rolled away beneath his pack (again), he just sat and stared at it, sorely tempted to crack the damn thing open with his war hammer. But then he’d be out of balm, and the rest of his supply was back at Skyhold. So he sighed again and began an awkward crawl on one arm to retrieve it.

“Lose something?” Dorian sashayed past him, already loosening the buckles of his robes on his way to his own bedroll.

Bull held up the jar as he grabbed it, then sat back to contemplate his next plan of attack. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dorian look from the jar to Bull and back again.

“Do you need help?” he offered.

With a wry twist of his lips, Bull held out the jar. Dorian smiled as he unscrewed the top of the jar with a flourish.

“Show-off,” Bull chided. He reached for the open jar, but Dorian held it out of reach.

“I’m not the one who allowed a wyvern to use my arm as a chew toy,” the mage retorted. Jar in hand, he sidled over, then gestured with free hand toward Bull’s bedroll. “This will be easier if you lie down.”

Bull’s brow furrowed. “What will?”

Dorian rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to watch you contort yourself in a pathetic attempt to apply this one-handed. Nor am I going to strain my shoulder reaching up the entire time. Your horns are, as you seem so keen to point out, quite impressive, and I’ve seen how long this takes you.”

Inside his chest, Bull could feel his heart rate picking up, and nervous tension bubbled in his gut. No one else had applied his horn balm since his tama. He’d known a few among the antaam who helped each other, but it was a quiet thing, private, a gesture of connection between two pieces of the whole Qun, small enough to be permitted, just barely squeaking in under that narrow boundary of personal allowances. It was not an action for a ben-hassrath.

“Bull? Are you all right?”

Dorian watched him with serious eyes, a slight twist of concern pulling his eyebrows down. That was the look that got to Bull every time, whether it was directed at him or the boss or any of the rest of their group. The Tevinter was all prickly temper and complaints while out in the field, all boisterous charm back at the Herald’s Rest, but when someone stumbled, when someone needed a hand back up, Dorian’s hand was always the first offered.

And Bull actually did need the help. So he nodded, scooted down on the bedroll, lay back with his head near Dorian’s knees, and took a deep breath.

He couldn’t help but tense when Dorian’s fingers gave their first slick stroke, but it wasn’t like he’d never had the mage’s hands on his horns before, usually while Bull was balls deep in his ass. But this was different. This wasn’t a quick fuck, and Dorian wasn’t going to disappear as soon as the sweat dried. The mage was taking his time, working the balm into each crack and groove. When Bull looked up, he could see the little lines that formed at the corners of Dorian’s eyes when he concentrated. A lock of hair fell into his eyes, but he didn’t take his hands off to fix it. His perfect white teeth held on to a bit of his lower lip.

Bull really wanted to kiss that lip.

When he felt Bull’s gaze, Dorian frowned down at him. “Am I doing it wrong?” he asked, his hands pausing in their rhythm.

“No,” Bull replied. “No, it feels good.”

Dorian smiled, and the rest of Bull’s tension eased as his hands began to move again. They fought well together, flirted well together, fucked well together. This was just one more way they fit, one more way they could give each other what they needed. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d bent the Qun a bit, but it felt a hell of a lot better than some of the others.

“Hey,” he said, his eye drifting closed. “I’ve got some Antivan massage oil back at Skyhold. I may have to return the favor.”

Dorian’s laugh filled their tent. “I will absolutely take you up on that.”


	2. Dorian watches Bull fall in battle

Too many thoughts pass through Dorian’s mind when he sees Bull fall.

_This isn’t happening._

_Get up, you great lug._

_If you are making some absurd joke, I will set you ablaze._

But one sticks. One lingers in his brain long enough to pound and shout over the dragon’s dying roar. It trickles down the base of his spine along with ice-cold fear and comes tumbling out of his mouth.

“Don’t you dare,” he mutters as he pushes himself up from his meager rock shelter.

“Don’t you dare,” he says as he hurtles across the battlefield, ignoring Elette running toward him and Cole flickering in and out of his peripheral vision.

“Don’t you dare!” he exclaims as one of his fireballs turns the dragonlings attacking Bull into a writhing inferno.

“Don’t you dare!” he yells as he finally drops to the ground at Bull’s side. The qunari is face down in a pool of his own blood and makes no move even as Dorian shoves at his shoulder. He’s half-sobbing in his desperation to see his lover’s face, to see his eye open, his lips stretch into a smile.

 _Kadan_. A whisper in their tent this morning, a word Dorian didn’t know but had understood in one heartbeat. He’d been too taken aback to respond, and Bull had let him pretend he hadn’t heard.

But he _had_ heard. He had, and in the moment when Bull’s limp bulk finally rolls over, Dorian has some notion of what Alexius had been thinking when he nearly ripped the world apart for a chance to undo what’s past.

A dozen small wounds mar Bull’s chest, but Dorian pays them no mind as he sees the dragon tooth embedded in the qunari’s side. The point digs in just below his rib cage before widening to a base as wide as Dorian’s palm. Blood seeps from around it, staining Dorian’s robes as he reaches with trembling fingers to touch it. His hand shakes so hard the tooth vibrates with it.

Then it shifts beneath his tentative touch. It heaves up into his palm and then falls away. A soft groan accompanies the movement, and Dorian’s eyes snap to Bull’s face.

His lover’s eye blinks open. “Shit,” he mumbles. Then he raises his head to survey his injury.

“Damn,” he says as his head thunks back to the hard ground. He looks up at Dorian then, and his lips curl just as Dorian had imagined. “Pretty badass, huh?” he wheezes. 

“You…” Dorian begins, but the lump caught in his throat prevents anything further.

“Hey,” Bull murmurs, and he lifts a hand to cup Dorian’s face. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Dorian sniffs and wipes at his eyes with the sleeves of his robe. “Yes, well… see that you don’t.”

Behind him, he can hear footsteps approaching and the rattling death calls of the last dragonlings. Then Elette is crouched beside him, her hand glowing with healing magic.

“Hey, boss,” Bull says with a wink for Dorian and a gesture at the tooth, “can I keep it?”


	3. Dorian and Bull wake the dead

For a moment after the battle, they all stand in silence. The sweat beaded on Dorian’s temple begins to drip, but one hand holds his staff and the other has a death grip on the waistband of the ridiculously large pants that are all that separate his skin from the cool night. The attack had been too sudden and the tent too dark for him to locate his own clothing, and he had finally yanked on Bull’s.

Bull, of course, stands completely nude beside the campfire, his ax resting over one shoulder. Sera stares openly, but Elette averts her gaze to Dorian. Even by the fire’s dim light, he can see her lips struggling not to stretch in a grin.

“I have to ask,” she finally says. “Did you just… ?”

“Not a word,” he warns her.

“Why?” Sera’s attention snaps to him, and Dorian can feel his face heat. “You do this?” she asks, waving her bow toward the half-dozen corpses lying quiet once more at their feet. “Bad enough when we’re fighting baddies. Why pull the creepy shite now?”

“I don’t think it was on purpose, Sera,” Elette says. Her eyes stray back to Bull, and the moment their gazes meet, she and the qunari are all but bent double, howling with laughter.

Sera frowns at them. “You just…” Her narrowed eyes take in Dorian’s dress–and Bull’s decided lack thereof–then widen. With a scowl, she stomps to Bull and whacks his shoulder with her bow. “Your fault. Stay out of his arse ‘til we’re out of the mire, yeah?”

The Bull nods as he straightens and wipes a tear of mirth from his eye. He looks to Dorian, and his grin softens when he sees the flush across his cheeks. “You all right, kadan?”

Dorian waves the hand holding his staff. “Yes, yes. Fine. What’s a bit of crushing humiliation amongst friends?” 

“Dorian,” Elette says, and her expression has turned fond as well. “It’s fine. Really. You’re not the only mage to ever lose control in the throes of passion.”

“Yeah,” Sera pipes up. “How do you think Cully-Wully lost that bit of his ceil–” Elette’s hand wrapped around her mouth cut her off.

“We’ll just be heading back to our tent now,” Elette says, her own face darkening in a blush.

Despite his embarrassment, Dorian can’t help but chuckle as he watches the two women bicker and giggle their way back to their tent. He can feel Bull’s warm bulk sidle up beside him before a large hand comes to rest on his shoulder. When he looks up, his lover’s face has turned serious.

“You sure you’re all right?”

Dorian nods. “I suppose we _were_ pushing our luck doing something like that in a place like this.”

Bull hums his agreement. “Might be best to hold off for now.”

“Just for now,” Dorian clarifies.

Bull bends down to kiss his temple, and the heat in Dorian’s face settles to become a more comfortable warmth in his chest. But when he pulls back, the quanri’s grin leaves him sighing.

“This is going to become one of the Chargers’ ridiculous stories, isn’t it?”

“Nope.” Dorian raises an eyebrow, and Bull’s grin only widens. “This one definitely needs a song.”

“Vishante kaffas,” Dorian mutters as he shoves Bull away. Bull’s laugh booms over the silent swamp as he follows Dorian back to their tent.

“Come on, kadan. Help me think of something that rhymes with corpse…”


	4. Dorian and Bull cuddle for the first time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by this amazing image by debora-fm on tumblr: http://debora-fm.tumblr.com/post/108132988787/so-many-fics-with-tent-sleeping-not-enough-fics. Pre-relationship.

Waking with a gasp from a nightmare was nothing new to Dorian, nor any mage. His dreams had gotten worse since he’d come south, dreams of blood and knives and unseen hands pinning him down, but he had dealt with them as easily as he’d dealt with his boyhood dreams of academic failure or spells gone awry. 

The dreams that left him trembling were far different. Dreams of cool silk and hot skin, of watching with pride as his father shook his faceless lover’s hand, as his mother, misty-eyed, embraced him as a second son. Dreams of whispered promises of what they would get up to when his parents retired and their delightful evening shifted to a passion-filled night. Those dreams left Dorian shaking, sore, the strain of wrenching himself awake a physical ache.

The tent was pitch-black. Had he been alone, he might have conjured a wisp, but as it was, he simply dug his fingers into his scalp and forced several long, slow breaths. As his ragged exhalations filled the silence, he realized that it was in fact silence, that he could not hear the now-familiar huffs of The Iron Bull asleep. Either the qunari had left their tent or…

“Dorian?”

The voice, low and even as it was, brought heat to his cheeks. “Of course, it’s me,” he snapped. He heard shifting from across the canvas floor, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “And I’m not about to succumb to demonic possession, so you can let go of whatever weapon you keep close to hand when you sleep with the mage.”

The Iron Bull chuckled. “Good to know.” More shifting resulted in the soft pop of joints cracking, and Bull sighed in satisfaction. “You’re all right then?”

“Yes. Fine. Go back to sle-eep.”

The tremor on the last word gave him away, a stutter as he twitched with a lingering shiver. Mutual embarrassment made the tent fall silent again. Or at least Dorian assumed it was mutual. He wasn’t certain The Iron Bull was capable of feeling embarrassment.

“You cold?” the low voice asked.

As excuses went, it was flimsy, but the night air held just enough of a chill to keep it from being pathetic. The touch of his phantom lover had left Dorian with a crop of goosebumps; rubbing his hands over his upper arms was a practical gesture and not at all theatrical, especially as The Iron Bull couldn’t see him.

“A bit,” he murmured.

“Get over here then.”

Dorian blinked in the darkness. “I beg your pardon?”

The Iron Bull’s answering grin was all too easy to picture. “You don’t have to beg; I’m inviting you.”

“Inviting me to what?”

“Get closer,” Bull answered. “You’re cold. I’m warm. It’s pretty simple.”

Perhaps it was simple here in the south or even under the Qun, but the comfort Bull offered was unheard of in Tevinter. Fear was weakness. Disturbing the servants in the night–or, Maker forbid, one’s parents–was the poorest of ill manners, no matter how young and tearful one was, no matter how dark and vast the night. No matter that the cold of one’s lonely bed made a demon’s temptation of love and acceptance all the more enticing.

Another shiver raced down Dorian’s spine, and he licked his lips. “You are wearing pants, yes?”

The Bull laughed again. How easily he did that in the black of night. “Yeah, but I’m going to pretend you sounded disappointed when you asked that.”

Dorian himself still wore his trousers, but he reached for the dubious protection of his wool blanket as he made a tentative move toward the center of the tent. He groped along the canvas until his hand encountered a warm curve of muscle. His chilled fingers mapped its shape, not quite able to span its full width. Bull’s bicep. It was… impressive.

It shifted beneath his touch, and Bull’s hand tangled with Dorian’s forearm as it reached behind him. Then he felt another point of warmth at his back before Bull’s fingers came to rest against his shoulder. Their pressure was gentle but steady, guiding him closer against Bull’s side. After a moment’s hesitation, Dorian laid his head against Bull’s broad shoulder.

His muscles felt stiff, his face flushed. The absolute foolishness of it took his breath away. He considered pulling away, but Bull shifted, settling them more comfortably. The movement nestled his face against Bull’s chest, which was quite warm and, as advertised by the Chargers, “pillowy.” Lying next to the qunari felt like cuddling a hot-water bottle large enough to warm all of him at once, with the added benefit of sturdy solidity to support him.

To his relief, Bull made no further comment and kept his one hand on Dorian’s shoulder and the other chastely by his far side. By the time Dorian let his own hand rest against Bull’s heartbeat, the massive chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm and soft breath ruffled his hair. Dorian’s shivers had stopped, his goosebumps fled. Bull’s arm wrapped comfortably around his shoulders without constraining him. 

The tension slowly bled from Dorian’s body, and he allowed himself a deep breath. It filled his nostrils with the earthy scent of male sweat, but it was the clean sweat of sleep rather than the salty stench of exertion.

Dorian realized that traces of this scent had been caught in his bedroll for weeks. He’d attributed it to the musty tent or the plants crushed beneath their weight, but he had spent night after night curled into the scent of The Iron Bull. Already the familiarity of it was lulling him to relaxation; coupled with Bull’s heat and the late hour, it made Dorian’s eyelids droop. He knew the dawn would likely bring another round of Bull’s merciless teasing, but he was too worn out and comfortable to care. Memories of the dream dissolved like mist before the sun, and he drifted away to undisturbed sleep.

He woke curled in Bull’s bedroll, the wool blanket pulled up around his shoulders. When he emerged, the qunari greeted him with a smile, a bowl of porridge, and a clap on the back before retreating to break down their tent, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Perhaps it truly was that simple.


	5. Bull redefines perfection

While Dorian finishes getting ready, Bull lounges on their bed, skimming _Hard in Hightown_ for the third time. It’s not that Varric’s work is that great, but the only other reading options in their room are Dorian’s research on necromancy. Bull might know how to read Tevene, but that doesn’t mean he wants to.

“There,” Dorian finally says from his spot in front of the mirror. He tilts his head to better study his profile. “Absolute perfection.”

Bull snorts as he flips a page. “You’re not perfect, Dorian.”

With a sniff, Dorian turns to face him, nose in the air. “Excuse you.”

“You’re not perfect,” Bull repeats. He drops the book and eases himself off the bed. “No one is.”

When he reaches Dorian, he grabs a handful of his ass, prompting him to squawk like a puffed-up peacock. “You could gain a hundred pounds,” Bull murmurs. His hand travels up Dorian’s back. “Be covered in scars.” He kisses the coiffed black locks. “Lose your hair.” Then he bends to kiss Dorian’s temple. “Lose an eye. And you’d still be Dorian fucking Pavus. Which is damn well better than perfect.”

“Hmmm,” Dorian hums, not quite agreeing but not quite disagreeing either. And that’s progress. His arms reach up to wrap around Bull’s neck as he raises an eyebrow. “A hundred pounds more, scars, less hair, one eye. You realize of course that you’ve just described yourself.”

Bull laughs. “Well, yeah.” He slaps his own belly for emphasis. “I mean, come on! This is obviously perfection.”

Dorian pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, but Bull knows it’s mostly to hide his smile. “You are an ass.”

“You mean I’m your amat-ass,” Bull insists, waggling his eyebrow.

The disgusted sound Dorian makes could rival any of the Seeker’s. “Horrible. Disgraceful.” He pushes against Bull’s chest to break the circle of his arms. “I must leave the room immediately before I contract the wretched sense of humor that afflicts you.”

And he does go, but he pauses on the threshold, looking back over his shoulder. Bull’s kisses have left his hair just slightly mussed, his mustache just a fraction askew, but Dorian doesn’t lift a hand to fix them. Instead he shoots Bull a blinding smile, and that… that is perfection.

Bull grins as he follows him out the door. They might both know Tevinter’s rules, but that doesn’t meant they have to play by them.


	6. Bull watches Dorian spar

Even on a gorgeous day when the sun shone down on Skyhold from a crystal-blue sky, Bull didn’t usually encounter the Inquisition’s commander while walking the ramparts. He was glad to see Cullen, even if the man did seem a bit too pale and pinched as he stood with folded arms watching the troops drill in the courtyard.

“Training going to your liking?” Bull asked as he approached.

With a visible start, Cullen whirled to face him. To Bull’s surprise, the man’s face flushed. He lowered his arms, only to cross them again a moment later.

“Well, yes,” he finally responded. “The mages are a part of our forces. They need to be at peak condition.”

“Mages, huh?” 

Bull leaned over the parapet to get a better look at the training field below. Every mage in Skyhold had to be in the loose circle gathered in the clearing. A dozen of Cullen’s templars hovered nearby, but none of the crowd paid them the slightest attention. Instead they all focused on the pair sparring in the center.

In the afternoon’s rare heat, Dorian dueled shirtless, every finely honed muscle on display and limned with sunlight. The boss didn’t have his tone, but she could match him in grace and the sleeveless undertunic she worse clung in all the right places. When she raised her arms to twirl her staff, the tunic rode up to reveal a sliver of slim waist. Bull let out a low whistle, and when he glanced at Cullen, he saw the man’s lips part.

“I don’t think peak condition is too much of a problem,” Bull noted.

Cullen cleared his throat, but his rapt expression shifted to a wry smile. “I was referring to their casting abilities.”

“Uh-huh.” 

Bull grinned, and then cheering from below drew their attention back to the courtyard. The former Circle mages clapped and hooted as Dorian scrambled to escape the sizzling tongues of purple lightning that slammed into the hard-packed dirt. Holding his staff close, his feet dashed in a pattern that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Rivaini tavern. His thin trousers didn’t conceal much, and Bull licked his lips at the movement of Dorian’s taut thighs. The lightning ceased, and Dorian bent at the waist to catch his breath, leaning on his staff and giving the watchers an eyeful of his sculpted ass.

“Damn,” Bull breathed, and he heard the commander snort beside him.

In the next moment, Dorian snapped back to his full height, straightening his shoulders and twisting his staff in an elaborate exhibition. He shouted something to Trevelyan that they were too far to hear, but it made her laugh and made the older mages cover the ears of the wide-eyed apprentices. Cullen chuckled, and Bull was glad to see the man so relaxed after a display of the Inquisitor’s raw power. Circle trained as she was, she still struggled to cut loose, even when their lives depended on it, but Dorian was slowly coaxing her to use the weapons she’d been given.

If there was anyone Bull trusted with that task, it was Dorian.

Not that it meant Dorian would go easy on her. Bull’s grin widened as Dorian slipped into a formal stance to resume the duel. He offered the boss a courtly bow, but as he rose, one of his eyebrows lifted and one of his hands released his staff to smooth his mustache. 

“I know that look,” Bull confided to Cullen. “Your mage better watch herself, templar.”

“She’s hardly my mage,” Cullen retorted. “And unless I’m mistaken, she’s not the combatant that was nearly on his ass, _qunari_.”

Bull barked a laugh. “We’ll see.”

For a few silent seconds, Dorian and Trevelyan did nothing but watch each other. Dorian did his best imitation of a statue, every inch of him poised as carved marble. Trevelyan shifted foot to foot, her staff hand to hand, the pent-up energy of a lioness who’d been told all her life she was a house cat. She was too far to make out the flickering motion of her gaze, but Bull had seen it up close on the battlefield. Dorian didn’t seem to so much as blink, and it seemed as if the whole keep had gone silent.

“Wait,” Bull heard Cullen urge under his breath. “Just wait.”

But patience in battle required years of training to overcome instinct, and the boss just wasn’t there yet. She shot out of her stance toward Dorian, raising her staff, and Cullen groaned.

The moment she showed her hand, Dorian moved to counter, slipping effortlessly beneath another fork of lightning. He dipped his shoulder and rolled his spine in a way Bull would have swore was impossible until he met the man, and his dodge became an all-out attack. Snakes of flame twisted down his arms and flew through the air to crash against Trevelyan’s hastily erected barrier. The snakes split in two, then split again, and again, until the shape of the barrier writhed in living flame and hid the Inquisitor from view. Cullen’s hand went to his hilt and he’d taken half a step before Bull put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s fine,” he promised the rigid-jawed commander. “Dorian’d cut off his own arm before he’d hurt her.”

A loud bang echoed from below, and they both pressed against the rampart for a better view. The shouting and milling crowd hid the ring for a moment, and Bull felt a flash of spine-chilling doubt. What if Dorian had lost just a hair’s breadth of control? Accidents happened, and when magic got mixed in, things could really turn to shit.

A heartbeat later, the crowd erupted in wild cheering once more. The Inquisitor, laughing again, shook a rain of ash from her hair and clothes and then saluted Dorian with a deep bow. To Bull’s satisfaction, the mages cheered just as hard for Dorian’s victory as they had for the Inquisitor’s. The applause seemed to catch Dorian off guard. He hesitated a moment before he nodded to the crowd, and his thin-lipped smile and lowered eyebrows implied he was waiting for the moment when cheering turned to stones thrown in his direction. Bull’s satisfaction twisted to a clenching feeling in his chest at that expression.

The boss must have seen it too because in the next moment, she had slung her arm around Dorian’s waist. This time she said something to make Dorian laugh, and as he did, tendrils of smoke escaped from his lips. Bull’s concern burned up as heat shot straight to his groin.

“I’ll be in my quarters,” he told Cullen, one eye still on the wafting smoke.

“Yes.” Cullen cleared his throat again as Dorian twirled Trevelyan in his arms and they both bowed to the assembled mages, giving those on the ramparts another glorious view from behind. “I should return to my duties as well.”

Bull waited until the man was halfway to his office before cupping his hands around his mouth. “You handle those duties, Commander!” he called. “You handle them until they’re all finished!”

Cullen shook his head and flashed Bull a rude gesture without turning around or breaking stride, and Bull just laughed.


	7. Bull has an idea; Dorian's not sold

Smoke and sand wafted across the ruins in equal measure. Coughing into his elbow, Dorian tried to stand in such a way that he could shield Sera from the worst of it as Elette healed her wounds. Minor burns mostly, but given that Sera already glowed pink with sunburn, a bit of attention seemed in order. When the healing was finished, the three of them sought shade among the ruins and drank their fill from their canteens. Now that the high dragon was dead, they could head back to camp and finally quit the Western Approach, hopefully for good this time.

While the women rested, Dorian squinted into the glaring sun to where Bull crouched in the sand. Something had caught his attention to the point that he hadn’t yet cleaned his weapon. Dorian muttered a fervent prayer that he wasn’t poking around amid entrails and then went to check that Bull had drunk from his own canteen.

He was glad he had when he reached Bull and found him pouring the precious water over something small clutched in his hand. 

“If you intend to dehydrate yourself, at least have the decency to wait until we’re near a wagon,” Dorian chided. “I refuse to drag you over these dunes.”

“Relax,” Bull replied, still focused on his hoarded treasure. “I brought two canteens.”

Dorian knelt beside him in the sand. “What _are_ you doing?”

Bull held up his hand and pinched between his thumb and forefinger was a shining dragon scale. It was nearly the width of Dorian’s palm, but Bull’s hand made it seem smaller.

“Look at this flexibility,” Bull said, and he bent the scale with his other hand. Now matter how he twisted and turned, the scale returned to its original shape without cracks or distortion.

“Impressive,” Dorian admitted. 

“Yeah, but it’s brittle as hell,” Bull went on. “Can’t take a direct hit.” To demonstrate, he lay the scale on a nearby rock, pulled his belt knife, and slammed the point into the scale. It shattered immediately, sending sparkling shards flying in all directions.

“No good for armor then,” Dorian noted.

“Now look at this,” Bull said, and he opened his belt pouch to reveal another scale. This one was darker, smaller, and thicker, and when Bull laid it on the stone and hit it with the knife, it rebounded the strike with a spark. Not a nick showed in the scale, though Bull grunted as he noted the dulled edge of his knife.

“I got this one off the Hivernal,” Bull said. “Try to bend it.”

Dorian reached down and grabbed the rough-edged scale. Taking it carefully in each hand, he attempted to alter its shape without success. Even with thick gloves and a set of tongs, he doubted he could manipulate the tough scale. He hefted it, bouncing it several times in his palm. It weighed far more than the Abyssal scale, more even than a stone or ingot of steel of equivalent size.

“Solid but heavy,” he said.

Bull nodded. “Too heavy. You’d have to shave it down before you could even think of wearing that stuff.”

“Too labor intensive for a piece of any significant size.” Dorian hummed in thought as he stroked his mustache. “The ideal material would fall somewhere between. The strength of the Hivernal with the malleability of the Abyssal.”

“Exactly!” Bull agreed. “But nothing like that exists.” His grin spread as he waggled his eyebrow at Dorian. “Yet.”

Dorian frowned. “Yet?” As he took in Bull’s giddy excitement, the way he practically bounced on his knees, realization (and horror) dawned. “No,” he declared. “No. Absolutely not.”

Bull’s grin only widened. “Come on, kadan! Imagine the possibilities! We already know how to lure an Abyssal. We find a female dragonling, take her over to the Emprise, find ourselves a male Hivernal, and bam! Perfect armor!”

“You can’t…” Dorian sputtered. Then he crossed his arms and shot his lover a stern glare. “Bull. You cannot breed dragons.”

Bull’s grin shifted to a pout. “But…”

“No!” Dorian held up a firm hand and then shook his head. “Besides they’re different species. You don’t even know if they _could_ breed.”

“Don’t you want to find out?” Bull asked.

“No.”

“Aw, where’s your intellectual curiosity?”

“In books,” Dorian replied. “Where it belongs.”

Bull heaved a dramatically heavy sigh as he pushed to his feet. Dorian rolled his eyes but accepted Bull’s offered hand and let his lover help him up. As he swiped his hand over his trousers to remove the sand, Bull cast a longing eye at the scale shards scattered about them. But he followed without protest when Dorian led the way back to Elette and Sera.

That is, until they stood gathering their supplies in preparation for the return to camp.

“Hey, boss,” Bull said with a nonchalant air. “I’m going to go on ahead. Have a chat with that researcher.”

Dorian pinched the bridge of his nose. “Amatus…”

“Just a chat,” Bull replied, spreading his hands wide in a gesture of innocence.

Elette looked back and forth between them, a confused wrinkle between her eyebrows. “Um… all right. We’ll meet you at camp.”

Bull let out a childish hoot of joy and then went tromping off through the sand as fast as his feet would carry him.

“Do I want to know?” Elette asked Dorian.

“No,” he sighed. “You really don’t.”


	8. A demon attacks Dorian with the likeness of Felix

The moment the rage demon fell, Bull felt the tingle of the barrier surrounding him pop out of existence. He yanked back his ax with a grin, planning to tease Dorian about cutting it so close. Instead he turned to find his lover stumbling away from a despair demon, eyes wide, hands raised not to cast but to shield himself from whatever had put the look of pure horror on his face.

Bull wasted no breath calling out to him. He lowered his head and charged at the demon. The distance was just barely too far, forcing him to extend his weapon at the last moment to intercept the icy blast. Frozen crystals covered the haft like shards of glass, slicing into his palm, and the maneuver left him exposed. He grunted in pain as the things claws sank into his back, but he let his momentum carry him to Dorian. He dropped the axe and tackled his lover to the ground, rolling to cover him with his own body as he roared out a call for aid.

“BOSS!”

The boss’s fire didn’t have Dorian’s finesse and Bull winced again as the skin of his back prickled with uncomfortable heat, but it got the job done. The demon dissolved, its shrieks echoing off the hills around them. Bull kept Dorian pressed to the ground until he heard the sizzle and crack of the rift closing.

He pushed back slowly, not wanting to crush Dorian anymore than he had or irritate his own injuries. When he reached his knees, he looked down to see his lover pale and shaking with tears leaking from his squeezed-shut eyes.

“Dorian,” he said. He glanced back at where the boss was helping Varric to his feet and then pitched his voice lower. “Kadan,” he murmured. Dorian wasn’t keen on using terms of endearment where the others could hear, but the word got him to open his eyes.

“Where’d you get hit?” Bull asked, keeping his voice calm and soothing.

“What?” Dorian gasped. He blinked into the afternoon sunlight like he’d been cooped up in his library for hours.

“The demon,” Bull prompted. His eye wandered over Dorian but couldn’t find any injury. “Where did it get you?”

“It… it didn’t.” Dorian rubbed at his face with a trembling hand, then dropped it with a sigh. His eyes widened in an instant, and he shot up to sitting. “You’re bleeding.”

Bull shrugged. The movement stung, but the wound didn’t feel that deep. “Are you sure you’re not?”

“I’m fine,” Dorian clipped, and Bull could only snort in disbelief. The fingers he pressed to Bull’s bicep were ice cold. “We should get Elette to heal you.”

When he moved to rise, to gain the boss’s attention, Bull snagged him by the wrist and pulled him back to kneel beside him in the grass. When Dorian squawked in protest, Bull shook his head.

“I don’t mind taking hits for you, big guy, but I like to know why.”

Dorian flinched at the words, eyes drawn to the blood Bull could feel dripping down his back, and he felt like a manipulative bastard for saying them, but whatever Dorian might say, Bull couldn’t shake the image of his lover’s haunted look. That demon had wounded him, and it was the kind of wound that would fester if it wasn’t purged.

After several seconds of defiant glaring, Dorian wilted. “The demon deflected one of my spells. It rebounded back to me, and I saw…”

Bull reached out to cup Dorian’s jaw with gentle fingers. “What did you see, kadan?”

When Dorian looked up, more tears dotted his lashes. “It was Felix,” he managed, though his voice choked on the last word. “Felix, dying and alone, in agony, begging me to come to him, to help him.”

“Shit,” Bull hissed. He reached out with his other hand and curled it around Dorian’s shoulders. Dorian leaned into him, setting his forehead against Bull’s chest. They stayed still and silent, and Bull focused on keeping his breathing slow and steady until he felt Dorian’s fall into the same rhythm.

“That’s likely how it was, you know.” Dorian sniffed as he pulled back. He wiped the tears from his eyes, but his bleak expression hit Bull square in the chest. “I was here. Alexius was here. The journey back likely accelerated his deterioration, but we sent him off with a pat on the back and didn’t give him a second thought.”

“That’s bullshit, Dorian,” Bull chided, but the ache in his chest made the words come out tender. “You wrote him how many letters? And he wanted to go back. He spent his last days sticking it to Corypheus the best way he could. And he wanted you to do the same.”

Dorian opened his mouth, lip curled and brow furrowed, but he closed it again as he sagged back into Bull’s embrace. “I just… wish I could have been there.”

Bull rubbed a hand up and down his spine. “The dying have to find their own path. The living can’t guide them on that journey.”

Dorian pulled back again with a sad look that had lost its edge but not its tiredness. “Does the Qun say that?”

“No,” Bull admitted. “I’ve just seen a lot of death.”

Tears brimmed in Dorian’s eyes again, but his mouth set in a determined line. “I forbid you to die for many, many years.”

Bull forced a huff of laughter, but the kiss he touched to Dorian’s lips wasn’t forced at all. “Same to you, kadan.”


	9. Dorian takes one in the ass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka Return of the Ass Puns

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Under normal circumstances, Dorian would wave off an apology from Sera--if he’d ever heard her apologize for anything, certainly if she sounded as frantic as she did at the moment--but he was a bit busy clutching at the grass beneath him and trying to keep the whimpers in his throat from escaping his lips. Not writhing also became critical when he shifted his hips and a bolt of searing pain radiated out from the arrowpoint dug into his flesh.

The flesh of his ass. Of course. _Of course._ Because the Maker had an abominable sense of humor.

Pressed against the ground as he was, he felt the vibrations of the rift sealing and heavy footfalls coming in their direction. A large palm settled at the base of his spine, and the welcome warmth shook loose his shock. He sucked in a sharp breath and buried his face in the dirt, squeezing his eyes to prevent their wateriness from coalescing into tears.

“Not your fault, kid,” Bull said. “That demon tossed him right in the way of your shot.”

“He’s lucky it was you,” Lavellan added. “An archer without your reflexes would have put that one through his neck.” 

Dorian heard the crunch of dry leaves beside his ear as Lavellan knelt at his head. He cracked an eye open, and from its corner, he tried to focus on the valleslin that to his dizzy mind seemed to squirm about her face. 

“Hey, Sparkler,” she said, her tone not ungentle. “You with us?”

“Yes,” he rasped. “Unfortunately.”

Above him, Bull _laughed_ , damn him. Lavellan’s lips quirked into a smirk before she turned to Sera, who stood at the edge of Dorian’s vision, still wringing her hands. The older woman tugged the strap of her satchel over her head and tossed it to the younger.

“Dig out a poultice and a potion,” she ordered.

Sera squatted on the ground and began to paw through the bag. Dorian felt Lavellan’s calloused fingers grip his shoulder, a smaller counterpoint to Bull’s hand still resting on his lower back.

“I’m going to pull it out,” she told Dorian as she pulled a rough linen handkerchief from her pocket. “You ready?”

“No,” he croaked. But when she raised an eyebrow, he sighed, gave her a little nod, and buried his face deeper into the dirt. It still couldn’t quite muffle his shout when the arrow tore free. He bit back on another cry when she pressed the handkerchief to his wound and leaned all of her weight on that hand. When he felt her other hand fumbling with the laces of his trousers, he would not have objected to a fissure opening in the ground and swallowing him whole.

“Fenedhis, Bull,” she griped. “How do these damn things come undone?”

“I got it, boss,” Bull chuckled, and to Dorian’s relief, large male hands replaced small female ones.

“I’ll get some bandages.” Dorian heard Lavellan shuffle to her feet and then pause. “Though I can’t say I know how to wrap someone’s ass.”

“Just fold it up. I’ll hold it on while I carry him back to camp,” Bull volunteered.

Dorian tried to formulate a protest, but Bull was already pulling down the back of his trousers. He at least remained mindful not only of the wound but of keeping Dorian’s front as covered as possible. Dorian heard the crinkle of a waxed vellum envelope as Sera handed over one of Stitches’s poultices. He dug his fingers into the soil but couldn’t help but buck at the sharp sting when the herbal concoction made contact. A moment later, the sting faded as did the worst of the ache. Dorian breathed deep in relief, which only sent bits of dry plant matter down his lungs. He raised his upper body to his elbows, hacking and spitting, tears streaming from his eyes.

“Easy, kadan,” Bull soothed. A vial of elfroot potion pressed against Dorian’s lips, and he drank it down gratefully.

When his coughing fit subsided, he let his head hang down between his shoulders to take a few breaths of clean air. He heard female voices quietly conversing, and he glanced up with still-watery eyes to see Lavellan leading Sera away. Sera looked back once, face still pale and twisted with concern and her hands clutching Dorian’s staff, and he tried his best to summon a reassuring smile.

“You owe me a pint when we return to Skyhold,” he called in a hoarse voice. Her answering smile was too hesitant for his liking, so he added, “I plan to pour it over your head.” 

She laughed, albeit weakly, and allowed Lavellan to loop their arms and guide her in the direction of camp. Bull laughed too as he eased Dorian’s trousers up. After some careful shifting and fumbling, Dorian ended up held against Bull’s chest, one of his lover’s hands pressed firmly against his ass and Dorian’s elbows propping him up on one of Bull’s shoulders. He tried to loop his legs around Bull’s waist, but the movement chased another whimper from his lips.

“You’re good,” Bull assured him. “I can handle your weight for the walk back to camp.”

“Or you could put me down and let me walk,” Dorian groused.

“Shit, no,” Bull replied as he turned to follow the others. “I’m not giving up a perfectly good excuse to grope you in public.”

He continued at an easy pace--barely seeming burdened for all that Dorian was not a small man--and Dorian let himself relax into his lover’s embrace. The pain had all but vanished beneath the poultice and the warmth of Bull’s hand, and the potion left his muscles feeling pleasantly loose. His new trousers were probably done for, not to mention…

He hadn’t realized he’d let out a soft sigh until Bull twitched his shoulder to nudge him. “You all right?”

“I’m going to have a scar, aren’t I?” Dorian asked with another sigh.

Bull came to such an abrupt halt that Dorian nearly tumbled out of his arms. From his perch, he and Bull were eye to eye, and that was strange enough without adding in the wide-eyed look of wonder on his lover’s face.

“Venhedis, Bull! What…?”

His heart picked up its pace in automatic response to the predatory grin that crossed Bull’s lips. Against his thighs, Bull’s chest vibrated with a low growl that was usually Dorian’s only warning before he was thrown on a bed or pushed against a wall or bent over the nearest piece of furniture. Under ordinary circumstances, such a response required hours of dedicated teasing on Dorian’s part, and he gaped at Bull, wondering if his lover was going to devour him whole in the middle of the Orlesian countryside. 

“Your ass,” Bull rumbled in explanation, “with a _scar_.”

“Oh, for… really?” Dorian tried for exasperated, but his voice came out closer to breathless.

“Mmmmm,” Bull hummed, and they stood, eyes locked in a lust-filled gaze, for several moments before Bull began to move again. Dorian swallowed with a dry mouth and struggled to regain control of his breath. 

“I suppose it will be easy to cover at least,” he noted, trying for nonchalance and failing miserably. Determined that they should both be equally affected, he turned his head and found the ear conveniently placed at the height of his lips. 

“No one will even know it’s there,” he purred. “It will be hidden away, only to be revealed to a specific gaze under specific circumstances.”

Bull let out another approving growl. “Sounds like quite an…” He turned to meet Dorian’s eyes with a shit-eating grin. “... ass-et.”

Dorian groaned. “You did not just make a pun out of my serious injury.”

“What?” Bull protested with the least convincing tone of innocence Dorian had ever heard. “I’m just agreeing with your ass-essment.”

With one of his dangling feet, Dorian kicked Bull in the thigh. “Now I wish the arrow had hit me in the neck.”

“Come on, kadan,” Bull drawled. “That would have been cat-ass-trophic.”

“Andraste preserve me,” Dorian muttered, burying his face in Bull’s neck. Then he snapped upright with a jerk, nearly smacking his head on a horn. “And if you call her Andr-ass-te, so help me, I will smite you myself and save the Maker the trouble.”

Open affection filled Bull’s smile. “Nah, I’m done.”

“Truly?” Dorian questioned. “You out of puns?” Despite himself and his fervent dedication to the tenets of good taste, he felt his lips twitching. “I’m ass-tounded.”

Bull’s raucous laugh boomed out over the countryside. The sheer delight in the sound filled Dorian’s chest with warmth, and he had to turn away to hide his own ridiculous grin. He could always blame it on the elfroot later.


	10. Dorian and Bull pining while they're apart

A block pattern tooled into leather catches Dorian’s eye, and he pauses at the shabby booth in the corner of the market. Amid the shoddily constructed coin pouches and belts lies a collar. _A cuff_ , Dorian corrects himself as he picks it up. On a truly large man, it would be no more than a bicep cuff.

He considers it for a moment, turning it in his hands, but the leather is cracked and worked with dull onyx instead of dawnstone and the design is not as reminiscent of vitaar as he’d thought on a glance. What he really wants is to hold the leather to his nose and _inhale_.

But the vendor eyes him with an oily smirk, greedy for a sale, and he sets the piece back on the worn tablecloth. He turns away, throat tight, and continues on into the city.

* * *

While the Chargers spend their well-earned pay on gear and ale and other sensible things, Bull wanders into a little shop that sells a rainbow of cosmetics. _Wanders_ , he insists in his mind, though the one man Hissrad could never lie to was himself.

His feet travel the remembered path from kohl to gold powder to a balm that’s rubbed into hands and feet while bemoaning new calluses. He uncorks a jar of the latter and breathes deep. Elfroot, black lotus, a hint of embrium to round out the sharp edges. He feels eyes on the back of his neck and turns just enough to see the shopkeeper torn between glaring and cringing at the qunari with massive hands pawing her delicate vials.

He replaces the cork and grins as he saunters up to the counter. The woman’s eyes widen at his approach, but pink tinges her cheeks, and when she swallows, he amends her reaction from fear to something else. He lays the coin down and gives her a one-eyed wink just to see her flush darken. Once he would have bartered that blush to more, but instead he turns away, back to the inn and the empty bed that come morning will keep the scent of elfroot, black lotus, and a hint of embrium.


	11. Dorian and Bull are reunited

The wind rises and falls in an endless moan. Branches creak. A log crumbles to ash in the fireplace, sending a plume of sparks up the chimney and extinguishing a good bit of the light in the room. Dorian sighs, placing a worn leather strip in his book and setting it aside. Even so, he hesitates to slide down the silken sheets and succumb to his pillow. Instead he sits, staring at embers, rubbing the fine fabric between a thumb and forefinger.

Alone in the villa, he’s reluctant to face another day. Another delay.

Bull’s voice on the crystal assures him of miles passing, of distance closing, but he cannot prevent nobles drawing out negotiations, Chargers with injuries that need tending, horses who throw shoes. Dorian will have to return to Minrathous soon, to enemies who smile and allies who threaten. The weight of the unbearable–that he and Bull might miss each other entirely, that one of these precious gasps for air might be swallowed by the tides that separate them–presses him down, and he doesn’t so much sink into the mattress as deflate.

Hours later, his eyes blink open to dim silvery light. The fire has consumed itself; the wind has cried itself to sleep. A large and luminous moon beams down, whether benevolent or ominous, Dorian can’t decide.

The bed shifts behind him, and he tenses before a large hand cups his hip. Over his shoulder, he sees another heavenly sight, large and silvery and beaming.

“You said tomorrow at the earliest,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep and something else.

“The moonlight was with me,” his lover replies. “I figured why waste it.”

Lightened of his burden of despair, Dorian surges up, peppering the beloved face with kisses flying free from the confines of his hidden heart.


	12. Bull is poisoned

Days pass as the poison works its way through Bull’s system. He stops trying to follow the words spoken around him, but his ears twitch toward Stitches and Krem’s concerned tones, Dalish singing, voices raised in anger tinged with worry. He should get up, calm them down, smooth things over. He doesn’t hear Skinner. Where is she? She can’t be gone, not when she finally has a good life after all the shit she’s been through. He wants to ask, needs to know, but his mouth won’t form the words.

Another sound. Hoofbeats. A threat to his boys? He tries to find himself, to be the shield that guards them–he didn’t lose them before and he won’t lose them now–but muscle won’t respond to thought.

He floats somewhere outside his body, and without his body… well, without his body, he’s not _The_ Iron Bull. Mindless he can handle, embraces it in battle, but bodyless? Formless? Names lie discarded at his feet–Imekari, Ashkaari, Hissrad. What is he if he’s not the Bull?

Fabric rustles as the tent flap opens. Someone drops to their knees beside him. Nerves still distant with toxin only vaguely register a hand at his jaw, and he tenses for the knife.

“Amatus?”

Outside the tent, he can hear his boys. Skinner too. She’s back from wherever she went. They’re all safe. He can focus on the voice inside the tent speaking softly to him, words and words and words, but only one that matters right now.

The word he knows. The _name_ he knows.

He is Amatus.


	13. Dorian buys Bull a present

Pacing the bare floor of Bull’s room, Dorian turned the small parcel over and over in his hands. While he’d stood in the market in Val Royeaux, the purchase had seemed a lark, a jest, something over which they could both laugh. He’d often picked up trinkets for Mae or Felix on his travels and never once had he hesitated to present the gifts with pomp and aplomb, eager to collect his well-earned accolades.

But crossing the threshold into Bull’s space, smelling the scent that was distinctly him, had reminded Dorian that the feelings he had toward Bull weren’t exactly the same as those he harbored for his other friends. He hadn’t sussed out what those feelings _were_ quite yet, but they were different. Different enough that he was standing in an empty room second-guessing every step that had led him there and very tempted to simply bolt.

His attempt to make good on that impulse was thwarted by the turning of the door handle. Dorian froze in place, shoving the hand with the package behind his back in a gesture that he acknowledged as ridiculous even as he made it. He focused instead on returning Bull’s welcoming smile.

“Hey, big guy. Heard you’d gotten back. Enjoy your shopping trip?”

“Yes,” Dorian replied absently. “Yes, it was fine.”

Bull snorted as he moved toward the bed and sat to remove his boots. Dorian turned with the movement, shielding the parcel with his body.

“That good, huh?”

“What?” Dorian blinked, barely registering what Bull had said. “No, it was…” He paused with a slight frown. “Well, mostly fine. That spice dealer didn’t have the saffron we’d hoped for.”

“Damn,” Bull sighed. Then he nodded toward Dorian. “So I take it that’s not what you’re hiding behind your back.”

Heat suffused Dorian’s face. Maker damn all Ben-Hassrath spies, former or otherwise. “That’s… it’s nothing.”

Bull grinned and held out one hand. “You gonna share that nothing?” When Dorian didn’t move, he waggled his outstretched fingers. “Come on. You can’t hold out on me if you got some of those spiced nuts.”

With a sigh, Dorian pulled the package from behind his back, but he hesitated to hand it over. “It isn’t something to eat.”

Bull’s eyebrow rose, and his grin shifted to a lascivious smirk. “That so? You go to that little shop with the pink curtains?”

If only he had. Presenting the Bull with an elaborately wrapped sex toy would have been far more simple. Dorian opened his mouth to respond, but there was really nothing more to say. He heaved a sigh and put the package into Bull’s hand.

“Heavy,” Bull noted, still smiling. He felt the object through the crinkling paper. “Not quite the shape I expected, but sometimes you…” His voice trailed off as the paper tore away and fluttered to the ground. As the silence continued, Dorian felt himself flush again. He closed his eyes.

“It’s silly, I know,” he murmured. 

“Is this what I think it is?” Bull asked.

Dorian had no answer for that, so he remained still and silent and safe behind his eyelids.

“Dorian.”

When he didn’t respond, a large, callused hand reached out and snagged his wrist. He reluctantly let himself be pulled toward the bed.

“Dorian, look at me.”

Another sigh escaped him, but he opened his eyes to look down at Bull, whose lips twitched. “Did you buy me a dragon carved from dawnstone?”

Dorian scowled. “As I said, it was a silly whim.” He extended the hand not held in Bull’s. “If you don’t want it, I’ll simply…”

But Bull snatched the dragon figure out of his reach. “Not a chance, Pavus. You get this back when you claw it from my cold, dead hands.”

Dorian stared at him, and when he saw the crinkles at the corner of his eye, he registered just how wide Bull’s smile had grown. A warm rush of relief and more of that feeling he felt uniquely for Bull flooded his chest. He couldn’t help but smile in response.

He quickly covered it with a sniff. “Am I to assume the threat of violence is how qunari express their appreciation? How stereoypically savage.”

“Mmmm,” Bull hummed as the hand holding the dragon came back to circle Dorian’s waist. “I’ll show you savage appreciation.”

“If that’s what you’re offering, I suppose I’ll accept,” Dorian answered. “But not with that, if you please.” He gestured to the dragon still jealously guarded in Bull’s grasp. “I did _not_ acquire it at the shop with the pink curtains.”

Bull appraised the dragon again, bouncing it in his palm with a look of fondness usually reserved for his favorite weapon. “Where did you get it?”

Dorian shrugged one shoulder. “Just a little cart in the corner of the market. Why?”

Bull’s grin was reply enough, and Dorian groaned as he remembered the parade of dragon figures that engulfed the small cart and would no doubt soon stampede across Bull’s windowsill.

“Sweet Andraste, what have I done?”

With a laugh, Bull tumbled them both back onto the bed… and then shifted to carefully place the little dragon on the nightstand.


	14. Dorian brings Bull another present

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pure fluff, part 2. Inspired by a comment by wanderingidealism.

Bull’s dragon collection had grown, sprawling across his windowsill. He hadn’t bought out the cart in the marketplace (yet), but a brood had gathered up around the original dawnstone figure. Krem had sewn him a stuffed one. Blackwall had carved one of wood. Sera had given him a bronze one stolen from… someplace. Even Solas had once handed him a sweet little specimen made out of elaborately folded paper.

Bull knew and treasured them all, which was why he was stumped when a new figure appeared without a note or a word from anyone. He plucked the miniature from its hiding place behind the bronze drake and held it up to the sunlight. The material shone a distinctive yellowish-white and felt almost warm in his palm–the same warmth that seeped into his chest from the necklace he wore.

A flash of red caught his eye, and he turned the figure over. On its belly was a carved rune, inlaid with crimson enamel. He ran one finger over it… and nearly dropped the thing when a tiny plume of fire shot out of its mouth.

“I see you found your present,” drawled a voice from the doorway.

“Kadan!” Bull cheered, and in the next moment, he had pulled his lover out of his casual lean and into his arms. Two months apart was too long. “Did you get this in Tevinter?”

“Mm-hmm,” Dorian hummed against his chest. He pulled back from the embrace just enough to grin up at Bull. “I’m sure Dagna could have managed something more impressive, but secrets aren’t exactly her strong suit.”

“I love it,” Bull assured him as he ran a hand through Dorian’s hair. It was longer than he remembered. “But I haven’t got anything for you.”

“Never mind, amatus,” Dorian murmured as he pressed into Bull’s weight again. “I have everything I need right here.”


	15. Dorian and Bull's time together draws to a close

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE angst warning. I will be asking myself why I wrote this for a long time to come.

Stealing back toward the bedroom, Dorian paused at the threshold as a long, rumbling snore cut through the still air. He cracked the door open and peered inside, his heart heavy in his chest. In only the time it took for him to set their chairs in the garden, Bull had fallen into another doze. He comforted himself with the fact that Bull had at least washed and dressed, even if puddles covered the basin table and dripped to the floor.

Dorian crept to the bed and gathered his magic. Bull’s lapses in memory had become more serious of late until he was sometimes disoriented and out of time. Common enough for a warrior who had suffered numerous blows to the head–or so the healer said–but Bull’s distress at the thought that he might be a threat in his confusion, that even now he might yet hurt his husband had been enough for Dorian to promise to defend himself. 

Usually he avoided considering how easy subduing Bull would be, but with bright sunlight streaming through the window, the evidence was too prominent to ignore. Bull had thinned, not around the middle, but in the ropy sinew of his once powerful arms and chest. His horns had been cut and filed, still impressive but half of what they were. (And oh, how Dorian had wept when the surgeon handed him the wooden box, though he had dried his tears before pulling back the curtain to see Bull. Bull had only smiled and patted his hand and talked about how nice it would be to not endure those damn neck aches anymore.)

And he’d grown pale. Venturing out during the winter would have been disastrous, possibly for both of them. If Bull had slipped on the icy path, Dorian would have exhausted his magic getting him back to the house. If he’d fallen on Dorian or Dorian had injured himself trying to prevent it…

Dorian shook himself and banished thoughts of the growing impracticality of their secluded villa. The ice was no longer a problem; the first flowers teased out shoots to reach for the long-awaited sun. He laid a gentle hand on his husband’s chest, hoping it was his Bull that would awake.

The snores broke off with a snort, and Bull opened his eye, milky with cataracts. He stiffened in alarm, and Dorian’s shoulders tensed in response.

“Amatus?” he asked.

At the sound of his voice, Bull relaxed back into the coverlet and Dorian sagged with relief. “Kadan,” his husband replied, his voice still deep and warm.

“It’s a lovely day,” Dorian told him. “Will you come out to the garden with me?”

Bull’s grunt was more acknowledgment than agreement, but then he reached out and fumbled for the cane leaning against the dresser. Dorian pressed it into his hand and then climbed onto the bed to help Bull lever himself to his feet. After a bit of pushing, Bull was upright but unsteady, and Dorian hurried to take his arm.

The tap of the cane on the stone floor accompanied their slow progress. Once the sound had echoed in a vigorous rhythm throughout the villa; Bull had accepted the concession to his limp with more grace than Dorian would have. Dorian smiled as he remembered the frequency with which his husband had looped the hook through the belts of his robe to pull him close with a waggling eyebrow.

His smile faded as Bull struggled down the few stairs to the path. Each shuffling step they took forced more and more of Bull’s weight on Dorian’s shoulders. By the time they reached the garden, they were both breathing heavily with the effort. Bull fell into his chair with a grateful groan, and Dorian settled into his with a similar sigh.

“Water?” he offered. At Bull’s nod, he poured a glass from the pitcher he’d brought out and chilled it with a small pulse of magic. Bull’s hand shook as he reached for it, and when he drank, small dribbles leaked from the corner of his mouth. Dorian took the glass back and offered Bull his handkerchief. While Bull wiped his chin and dabbed at the drops on his chest, Dorian grabbed his book from the table. His husband leaned back, face turned to the sun, hands crossed on his belly.

“That’s good,” he said.

Dorian didn’t know if he meant the water or the sun, but he smiled, gratified either way. “Shall I read to you?”

Another grunt answered him, and he knew it was likely a matter of minutes until Bull was asleep again, but at least he’d be out in the sunlight and fresh air. Cracking open the book, Dorian found the spot he had carefully marked after their last afternoon in the garden, months ago. He couldn’t quite remember the thread of the story, but Bull didn’t ask, so he simply read in a steady rhythm until he was sure his husband had dosed off.

Falling silent, Dorian flipped back through the book, refreshing his memory of the characters and plot. It wasn’t a terribly good book, but it was enjoyable enough for a spring respite. He even found himself rather involved in the plight of the dashing sea captain and his long-lost love. Without raising his eyes from the page, he poured himself a glass of water and nearly spilled the whole thing down his front when Bull’s voice broke the stillness.

“I’ve been thinking,” his husband announced, as if their conversation had just left off and not halted for a good half an hour.

“About what, amatus?” Dorian asked as he set the glass back on the table and shook droplets from his fingers.

Bull still faced the garden, though Dorian knew that at best he could perceive only vague shapes and shadows. “I think it’s time we got back to Skyhold.”

Dorian froze. He took a long moment to mark his new place in the book, forcing himself to take a deep breath to steady his voice. “Bull,” he said, “the Inquisition disbanded years ago.”

His husband turned to him with a grin. “Yeah, no shit, kadan.”

For a moment, Dorian grinned back, relieved and still so full of love for this ridiculous man, but as Bull’s grin softened to a wistful smile, he felt his chest clench tight.

“I just…” Bull began. His unfocused gaze wandered back to the sun. “I want to be there. One more time.”

The sudden lump in Dorian’s throat threatened to choke him, and tears stung his eyes. “That’s… a long journey,” he rasped.

“It’s the right season for it,” Bull said, waving a hand at the pale blooms. “We can make it.”

A tremor started at the base of Dorian’s spine and spread until he was trembling in every muscle. “And the journey back?”

Bull turned that soft smile on him again. “You’ll manage.”

Denial crossed Dorian’s lips in a stifled sob, and he raised a hand to bite hard on his knuckles. Bull’s palm covered his other hand, then gripped it tight, and for the first time in so many long, difficult months, Bull was once again the one providing strength and comfort.

The sun was slipping toward the horizon when Dorian finally mastered himself enough to draw even breaths. As he inhaled deeply through his nose, Bull handed back his handkerchief. Dorian wiped his eyes and did his best to twist his mustache back into shape.

“If that’s what you want, I’ll make the arrangements,” he murmured.

Bull nodded, still smiling. “It’ll be good, kadan,” he said. “Maybe we can even get some of the old gang to drop by.”

Dorian snorted and then had to blow his nose. “Play a hand or two of Wicked Grace?”

“Exactly!” Bull exclaimed. “Maybe kill a dragon too.” Before Dorian could panic, he held up his hand. “Kidding.”

Despite everything, Dorian huffed a laugh. “You’re awful and I hate you.”

His husband brought their clasped hands to his lips and brushed a kiss across Dorian’s knuckles. “Love you too, kadan.” 

They sat in the garden, hand in hand, until Bull’s head drooped and he began to snore again. Even then, Dorian remained sitting, caressing the mangled fingers and still-rough palm, waiting for the sun to set so he could pretend that only the approaching night had brought them such weariness.


	16. Bull dries Dorian's socks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel bad about the angst in the last chapter. Have some fluff.

A mutter of “Vishante kaffas” brings Bull’s head up from his whetstone. Across the tent, a shirtless Dorian digs through his pack, his movements becoming more and more frantic until all of the contents are strewn across his bedroll.

“Problem?” Bull asks.

Still studying all the crap he’s dumped out, Dorian runs an absent hand through his hair. He grimaces at the mostly wet strands and paws at them in irritation, finger-combing one way and then another, until he looks like a half-drowned bird with a puffed-up crest. Bull’s attempts to bite back his laughter aren’t successful if Dorian’s glare is anything to go by.

“I’m out of dry socks,” he snaps.

Bull shrugs and returns to sharpening his ax. “So hang up today’s.”

“Oh, yes!” Dorian trills with mock enthusiasm. “Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll simply hang a clothesline.” He leans over to snatch at the tent flap and whips it open to reveal the storm they tromped through all day still raging. “ _In the pouring rain_.”

With a grin, Bull shakes his head and sets down the ax and whetstone. “Damn, you get tetchy when you’re wet.” 

Before Dorian can hiss at him, he sidles closer, reaching around to tug the flap closed again. Then he pulls Dorian into his lap. Dorian stiffens and makes a noise of protest, but he can’t help but lean into Bull’s heat, and his tense shoulders finally relax as Bull chafes the chill from his bare arms.

“I still don’t have dry socks,” Dorian notes after awhile, and Bull chuckles at the pout he can hear in the words.

“Can’t you just…?” He trails off and wiggles his fingers.

“They’ll shrink,” Dorian replies. Then he lets out a pathetic-sounding sigh. “I ruined my last good pair from Tevinter that way.”

“I still say hang ’em.”

“And where, pray tell, in this musty tent do you see anything suitable to hang…” 

As he turns, Bull catches his eye and points with both hands. Dorian falls to silence as his eyes follow Bull’s fingers and then widen. 

“You’re not serious,” he says.

Bull just grins and holds out his hand. “Hand ’em over.”

Dorian’s expression reminds Bull of their first night together–a little wary, a little like he’s doing something he thinks he shouldn’t but definitely will. He keeps his eyes trained on Bull as he reaches for his wet socks and places them gingerly in Bull’s grasp. Bull wastes no time draping one sock over each of his horns. The wet fabric slaps as he shakes his head, peppering them both with drops.

“Nice, right?”

“Ludicrous, more like,” Dorian says, but he can no longer hold back the smile that’s finally emerging.

“Small price to pay for you not bitching about your footsies tomorrow,” Bull tells him.

Dorian’s smile turns sly. “Yes, well, speaking off…”

Before Bull knows it, he’s got two Tevinter feet masquerading as ice blocks pressed against his sides. He yelps and nearly sends Dorian tumbling from his lap.

“Hey, warn a guy!” he hollers while Dorian gives him a self-satisfied smirk.

“Oh, yeah!” shouts a female voice from the next tent. “Give it to him, fancybritches!” The sound of Sera and the boss laughing carries over even the rain pelting on the canvas overhead.

Bull grins down at Dorian. “You heard the lady.”

“Like that?” Dorian laughs, and then he waggles his hands over his head in an imitation of the flapping socks. “I’d be laughing too hard to manage.”

“Come on,” Bull wheedles. “Hey, if you get me hard, you can hang a third one!”

“Ludicrous,” Dorian declares again, but he takes a tight hold of the socks and tugs Bull down into a heated kiss.


	17. What Dorian will never say to Bull

In the moment after the great beast falls, all is silent. The local wildlife has fled the scene of carnage, and Dorian holds his breath, waiting for the dragon to rise again as it has too many times. But instead of a deafening roar, the quiet breaks upon an exuberant whoop from Sera. It’s followed by Bull’s booming laughter. Dorian fills his lungs with air, and as he exhales, his entire body slumps with released tension. He glances at the Inquisitor, who offers him a wry smile before going to survey the carcass and what they might gain from it.

Reaching behind him, Dorian slides his staff back into the holster strapped to his back and pulls his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the sweat and ash from his face. When the cloth covers his eyes, he’s suddenly seized about the waist. He flails for a moment, panicked, as his feet leave the ground. The landscape whirls around him, and even when it stops, he’s still suspended by strong arms. Beneath him, Bull grins, gazing up at him with a shining eye.

“That final shot!” he shouts. “You’re glorious, kadan!”

Dorian should be irritated, annoyed, but he finds himself grinning as well, shaking his head with a breathless laugh. “You’re ma-”

His jaw snaps shut before the rest of the word escapes. He saw Bull’s tombstone in the Fade, and he will never say it, not even in jest. Not to Bull. 

Instead, he wraps his arms around his lover’s neck and slides down his body to press a kiss against his lips.

“You’re marvelous,” he murmurs.


	18. Bull calls Dorian under unusual circumstances

With a narrow-eyed gaze, Dorian assesses his appearance one final time in the mirror. His robes are black, but the cut is less severe than most of his colleagues and he’s abandoned the hood altogether. Gold piping and jewelry hint at regality without encroaching upon the archon’s traditional use of the color. Every hair is in place; his skin is flawless. He lifts his chin and stares down his reflection to study the effect he must convey at tonight’s dinner.

Let them see that reform supports perfection just as well as tradition.

He feels a warmth at his breastbone, and his expression softens without his conscious direction. He can’t help but shake his head and smile as the magister in his mirror dissolves to a love-struck schoolboy.

Tugging the crystal on its chain from beneath his robes, he squeezes it in his hand. “Hello, amatus.”

“Kadan.” Bull’s voice is low and rough, and it sends a frisson of pleasure down Dorian’s spine.

“And what are you up to on this lovely evening?” Dorian asks, brushing smooth the silk that covers his hip. Just as well Bull hasn’t seen this new set of robes. They’d be in tatters on the floor in moments.

“Watching the sun set,” Bull answers. Dorian hears a subtle sound of shifting and then a soft grunt. “Thinking of you.”

“Is that so?” Dorian’s heart picks up just a bit, but he forces himself to take a deep breath. “Unfortunately I can’t speak for long. I have a state function, and the carriage will be ready at any moment.”

“Important?” Bull asks.

“Possibly. A few holdouts who’ve been playing both sides instead of committing to the Lucerni. I plan to give them a gentle nudge off the line they’re straddling.”

Bull huffs a laugh. “That’s my kadan. Kicking ass and taking names.” His voice tightens on the last word, followed by more shifting and another grunt.

The sounds should seem typical of their long-distance trysts, but for some reason he can’t identify, unease pricks at Dorian. “Bull? Where are you?”

“Western Approach. Near the old Warden keep.”

“You’re at the keep?” Dorian presses.

“Not yet,” Bull sighs in reply. “By full dark hopefully.”

Tension lingers in his voice, and though Bull is trying to mask it, Dorian realizes that what’s he’s hearing isn’t arousal.

It’s pain.

“What happened?” Dorian demands. “Where are the Chargers?”

“I’m fine, kadan…” Bull begins, and Dorian shakes his head even though Bull can’t see him.

“Where are you?” he asks again.

A pause follows, and when Bull answers, he sounds almost sheepish. “On a ledge about halfway down a canyon.”

“Kaffas!” Dorian curses. “Are you all right? Are you safe?”

“Yeah, I’m good. The ledge held up to me and a shit-ton of debris slamming into it, so I doubt it’s going anywhere.”

Dorian walks to his desk, so he can lean against it and hunch over the crystal cradled in his cupped hands, as if that will somehow bring him closer to Bull. “How did it happen?” 

“We got hired to clean out a wyvern nest in a cave at the edge of this canyon. One of them slammed into me, knocked me on my ass. I got my legs under it and flung it over the side, but when Krem and Grim came to help me up, the canyon lip gave out.”

“Are they all right?” Dorian asks, though he’s fairly sure of the answer. Despite his own predicament, Bull would sound much more distressed if any of the Chargers were in danger.

“Yeah, they got to solid ground before the edge came down.”

Meaning Bull pushed them to safety. Of that, Dorian has no doubt. “Can you climb the rest of the way down?”

“Too sheer.”

“And climbing up? The rubble must have created some handholds.”

“Yeah, but I won’t get far on a busted leg.”

“You… !” Dorian shouts, but he glances at his closed chamber door and lowers his voice. “You _broke_ your leg?” he hisses.

In the ensuing silence, he can almost hear Bull debating with himself whether to lie. “Little bit,” he finally admits.

“Venhedis, Bull! Are you bleeding?”

“Nah, it’s a clean break. Nothing’s sticking through the skin. It’s my fucked-up one anyway. Can’t get much worse that it was.” 

“I don’t even know how to respond to that,” Dorian says, and he lifts a hand to rub at the furrows in his brow.

“Air’s so dry here I’m surprised shit doesn’t crumble more often.” Bull chuckles. “Beats the northern humidity you must be stewing in though, huh, kadan?”

A muscle in Dorian’s neck twitches. “You’re trapped at a great height in a Maker-forsaken desert with a broken leg and you wish to discuss the _weather_?”

“Just passing the time until my boys get down here and haul me up,” Bull says, and by his tone alone, Dorian can picture him holding up one placating hand. “I’m _fine_ , Dorian.”

Dorian doesn’t know how to respond to that either, but in the next moment, a knock sounds against his door.

“Magister?” his steward calls. “The carriage is ready, my lord.”

“Yes, just a moment,” he calls back. His eyes scan the papers in neat piles on his desk as if they will somehow provide an answer to an injured lover half a world away.

“You gotta go?” Bull asks.

“No,” Dorian snaps. “Of course I can’t go. I can’t leave you like… I’ll cancel.”

“Dorian,” Bull says in an infuriatingly calm voice, “can you really afford to cancel?”

Dorian’s gaze lights on the highest stack of correspondence, the endless letters and memoranda required to arrange the night’s function. Months will pass before he has another such opportunity.

“Kadan, there’s nothing you can do,” Bull murmurs. “I’ll be fine. Call me in a few hours and I’ll be sitting at the keep with my leg on a chair and a drink in my hand.”

Dorian’s chest clenches, a new throb of the familiar pain of being torn between desire and duty. And he’d thought he was growing used to the feeling. What a fool he’d been. His steward knocks again, and Dorian squeezes his eyes shut.

“Amatus,” he whispers.

“Hey,” Bull answers. “Go kick some ’Vint ass for me. We’ll talk tonight.”

“Tonight,” Dorian agrees, and he speaks it with the reverence of a promise.

The crystal pulses once more before quieting in his hands. Dorian opens his eyes to watch the glow dim. Then he tucks the chain back beneath his robes, runs a careful hand through his hair, and squares his shoulders. 

“Horns up,” he tells himself. With one final touch to the spot on his robes warmed by the crystal, he sweeps to the door with confident strides, ready for battle.


	19. Dorian calls Bull back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sequel to chapter 19, as requested by pamurai.

With the door to his bedchamber closed behind him, Dorian finally allows his shoulders to slump, his mask to fall. Painful, hobbling steps carry him to the bed, and he drops on the edge with a groan. He hikes up his robes and rips open the top hooks of his boots. They’re thigh high, covered in buckles, and the very pinnacle of fashion. They also pinch and rub his skin raw. He wrestles with them for a full five minutes before they tumble to the floor, and then he sighs at the spots of blood on his fine linen socks.

He considers simply flopping back on the bed and not moving until morning, but a breeze from the open balcony door entices him, as does the full decanter and glass standing ready on the table outside. His servants are both paid and efficient, a combination that most of the Magisterium would insist was a contradiction.

With effort, he levers himself back to his feet and then limps out to the cool night air. He pours until the wine threatens to overflow the glass and takes several fortifying swallows. From his balcony, he has an enviable view of this quarter of Minrathous. At night, the magelights cast a twinkling glow that makes the stars pull back with envy, and he can almost imagine his homeland is the the bastion of enlightenment it claims to be.

Finishing his wine helps him put aside his frustration with reality, but that only leaves space for the panic he has been forced to swallow for the past several hours. He pours and drinks another glass before he feels ready to pull the chain from beneath his robes. His fingers stroke the crystal, too lightly to establish the link with its mate, as he considers what he will do if there is no answer. Scream, probably. Set fire to his chamber, his estate, to the whole bloody city. Lead every slave in a murderous rebellion against the puling, cringing lickspittles who urge him to patience and caution. The destruction of Tevinter would be a fitting epitaph for his beloved.

A deep breath shakes Dorian from his fog of wine and fear. Before he can sink again, he grips the crystal hard enough to drive its edges into his palm.

“Amatus?” he whispers.

“Kadan!” is his answer, and the two cheer-filled syllables send him reeling back against the balcony railing, dizzy with relief.

“Are you all right?” he demands once he’s regained his breath.

“Yep!” Bull exclaims in response. “I don’t know what Stitches gave me, but I like it!”

A weak laugh escapes Dorian, and he takes a moment to soak in the sounds of the Chargers carousing in the background.

“You’re at the keep?” he asks. “Is Stitches there?”

“Just took off with one of the stablehands. Why?”

Dorian swipes a hand through his hair, no longer caring if it’s mussed, and pushes himself upright to pour a more modest glass of wine. “I’d like to speak to Cremisius then, please.”

The silence is thick with Bull’s confusion. “Krem?”

“Yes,” Dorian replies. “Krem. Tevinter man, probably seated to your immediate left. I’d like to speak with him.”

Dorian sips at his wine as a murmur of voices too quiet to hear filters through the crystal. Then the soft clinking of Bull’s matching chain precedes another familiar voice. “Magister.”

“Lieutenant,” Dorian responds. “Would you please describe to me the day’s events?”

Another pause passes, just long enough for Krem to cast a questioning glance at Bull. “The chief tell you about the wyverns?”

“Yes. Clearly you were able to get him back up the canyon.”

“Wasn’t easy,” Krem drawls, and Dorian can hear the man relaxing into the story now that he knows he’s not revealing anything. “We went looking for a sled at first, but nobody’s got one out here in the desert. We requisitioned an old wagon, took the wheels off, and slid it down a ramp Rocky fashioned from the rubble. Put the chief on, dragged it up, reattached the wheels, and hauled him back to the keep.”

“And his leg?” Dorian asks.

“Splinted and stable. He’ll need a new brace, but after that, should be the same as before.” Then Krem snorts. “It’s the wyvern bites that’ll leave the impressive scars. Big lug’s wrapped in so many bandages, he almost looks like he’s wearing a shirt for once.”

As Dorian’s breath catches, he hears a snap of “Dammit, Krem!” and the sound of a mug of ale crashing to the floor. Bull’s voice immediately follows.

“Kadan,” he almost pleads. “Kadan, I’m _fine_.”

“Fine?” Dorian gasps, still as short of breath as if he’d been punched in the chest. “If you were fine, you wouldn’t be covered in bandages!”

“It’s just a precaution,” Bull insists. 

“Against _what_?” Dorian snaps.

“You know…” Bull equivocates. Then he sighs. “Poison.”

“Poison,” Dorian repeats, slamming his glass down on the railing. “You not only _broke_ your leg, you were bitten and _poisoned_ as well.”

“Stitches doesn’t know if I was _actually_ poisoned.”

“You…” Dorian begins, then he forces himself to take another deep breath. “And you simply _neglected_ to tell me this? Did it slip your mind as you lay bleeding on a canyon ledge?”

“There was nothing you could do…”

“And so I should be ignorant of your well-being?” Dorian shouts. “Or lack thereof! If I’m ever injured or ill, I suppose I should lie as well?”

“Yes,” Bull growls.

Dorian’s scathing retort dies on his lips. “What…?” he stutters. “Why? Why would you say that?”

“Because if you ever tell me you’re hurt, I’ll haul ass to Tevinter and rip apart any asshole who ever dared to touch a hair on your head.”

The vehemence in his lover’s voice oddly sends Dorian into an opposing calm. “Amatus…”

“I’m serious, kadan. That helplessness, that fear… you don’t need that. And I don’t either.”

“Well, hopefully it will be a moot point on my end.” Rubbing the heel of his hand against his forehead, Dorian sighs. "As for you getting injured in the future, I am telling you here and now that I would rather know. It’s not your place to shield me from that truth.”

Bull huffs. “Noted,” he says, and though it sounds begrudging, it also sounds sincere.

“Good.” Dorian picks up his wine again and drains it in one swallow. “We can move on to how I’m going to respond to all of this.”

Bull’s snort of a laugh goes a long way toward warming his still-chilled blood. “Gonna put out a hit on a herd of wyverns?

“Nothing so gauche. Besides, I imagine your team ended them quite efficiently.” 

“Yep,” Bull confirms, his pride evident even in one word.

A hint of a smile curls Dorian’s lips. “No, I plan to hire the Chargers.”

“Hire us?” Bull asks.

“Indeed. The past few months have been quite taxing, and I find myself in need of a respite.” Upending the bottle of wine, Dorian pours the last of it into his glass. “I’ll be taking a sojourn to my border villa, and securing the services of a few extra guards would not be imprudent.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Dorian affirms. “The terms of the assignment are this. You spend an entire _week_ recovering at Griffon Wing Keep. _If_ after that period Stitches deems you fit for travel, you will ‘haul ass,’ as you put it, to my villa, where you will remain for an indefinite length of time to be determined on your arrival. I can match your current fee and provide room and board for your core company.” The ruby liquid clings to the inside of his glass as he swirls it. “Do you agree to these terms, The Iron Bull?”

“I do, Magister Pavus,” his lover replies, a smile in his voice.

“Excellent.” After a more deliberate sip of wine than he’s taken before, Dorian licks his lips. It really is quite a decent vintage. “I’m afraid there won’t be a formal written contract. I need to insist upon discretion.”

“We can do discreet,” Bull rumbles in the low tone that never fails to send a shiver down Dorian’s spine.

“Can you?” Dorian purrs in response. He leans one hip against the railing as he flicks open the top button of his robes. “Because I’m about to strip naked, pour myself into a steaming bath, and imagine all the ways I’m going to punish you for worrying me.”

He lets out a soft chuckle at the sounds that follow–the creak of a chair, a clatter, a startled shout of “Chief!”, the bark of “Help me upstairs!”

“Five minutes, amatus,” Dorian says as he saunters back inside. “Then I’m starting without you.”


	20. Bull gets a turn worrying over Dorian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on a suggestion by Dancer.

Four days have passed since Bull last spoke to Dorian. They’ve gone that long before--they’ve both got shit to do--but when he’d called two nights ago, Dorian hadn’t answered. That happened sometimes when your lover lived his life in a viper’s nest where even one weakness revealed could be the thing that got you killed. But the combination of time and silence is making Bull antsy. Antsy enough that he makes stupid mistake after stupid mistake while balancing the company books, growling and swearing, until Krem shoves him toward the tavern stairs with an order to talk to his magister.

So Bull climbs the stairs to his private room, grateful that their latest client secured them quarters at a halfway decent inn. He loves his boys and doesn’t mind sharing, but once in a while, a little quiet is nice. Especially when he’s got someone else to talk to.

The fire in the grate takes a while to catch and Bull curses again and then huffs a laugh at how much he misses the little luxuries of magic that he would have sneered at years ago. He grabs the chain around his neck but hesitates just a moment before wrapping the crystal in his fist. Dorian’s fine. Bull knows he’s fine. But a shitty little voice in his head is whispering doubts, the same voice that won’t listen to Stitches’s reassurances when one of the Chargers takes a hit.

He’d blame it on a demon, but he knows it's his own mind. Little Ashkaari, who always thought too much.

Defying the voice, he palms the crystal, but when silence answers, that shitty feeling sinks like a stone in his gut. He feels his chest heave with a few rough breaths, but he forces the air back to an even rhythm. Only to have it catch again when a throat clears on the other end of the crystal’s connection.

“What, Bull?”

Dorian sounds muffled and bleary, irritated at being disturbed, but Bull grins anyway.

“Just checking in, kadan. Haven’t heard you in awhile.”

He expects a flippant remark about how _naturally_ he would miss such gloriously rich tones, but his lover only sighs.

“Now... isn’t the best time,” Dorian says, and the tension lurking in his kadan’s voice makes Bull’s chest tighten again.

“What’s wrong?”

Silence stretches again, and when Bull speaks again, his voice barely carries over the crackling in the fireplace.

“Dorian?”

“You told me to lie,” his lover responds.

Bull’s brow furrows. “What?”

He hears another sigh and the whispering rustle of silk. “You said if I was ever hurt or ill, I should lie.”

The first sparks of rage simmer at the back of Bull’s consciousness, but he holds them back. “Did someone hurt you, kadan?”

Dorian huffs. “No.” A soft, little groan follows more rustling. “I’m sick.” 

“Sick?” Bull repeats. His instincts are still telling him to grab his ax and make someone pay.

“Sick,” Dorian snaps. “Ill. Indisposed. Incapacitated.”

Despite how miserable his lover sounds, Bull’s relief makes it impossible to contain his laugh.

“Yes, ha ha,” Dorian spits out. Then he barks a hoarse, ragged cough that chases Bull’s grin away.

“I’m sorry, kadan,” he says, contrite. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Fantastic.” Bull hears a loud sniff, and then Dorian blows his nose so loudly, he must be holding his handkerchief in the same hand as his crystal. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?”

“I didn’t mean you couldn’t tell me anything,” Bull sighs. “Just not any shit that would make me want to kill someone with my bare hands. If bitching about being sick makes you feel better, then have at it.”

Dorian sniffs again. “Even if there’s nothing you can do?”

Bull nods, though his lover can’t see him. “Even then.”

Dorian’s quiet for another moment, and this time Bull can hear his wheezing breaths. His rage has died, but the sounds of his lover suffering--even if it’s nothing life-threatening--brings a new pang to the center of Bull’s chest.

“Kadan,” he murmurs, and his arms feel empty.

“I’ve been in bed for days,” Dorian starts. “My head is pounding like a giant’s throwing rocks at it. I can’t breathe. I can’t sleep. This damn fever has me cold and hot, and everything aches like said giant has also kicked me for good measure.”

He trails off into another coughing fit, and Bull hears the clink of glass on glass before several loud swallows. “Ugh,” he groans, and Bull knows it’s half-exhaustion and half-exasperation.

He goes to the room’s bed and eases down to the edge, only sitting when the frame supports his weight. “Which are you now?” he asks. “Hot or cold?”

“I’m _freezing_ ,” Dorian answers.

“Damn,” Bull sighs. “If I were there, I’d climb right into that bed and warm you up. I’d even let you stick your icy footsies between my thighs.”

A weak, mournful sound is the only reply, and Bull closes his eyes as he stretches out on the bed.

“I’d hold you close, run my hand through your hair...”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Dorian says. “I’m soaked in sweat and haven’t bathed in days.”

“Yeah, baby, talk dirty to me.”

Dorian snorts and then groans as he blows his nose again. “You’re horrid.”

“You love it,” Bull responds, a little of his smile returning. 

The quiet this time seems peaceful as he listens to Dorian breathe and shift. Finally Dorian lets out a little sigh, and Bull pictures him sinking in to his luxurious mattress.

“Amatus?” he mumbles.

“Yeah?”

“Would you... will you keep the connection open? Just until I fall asleep.”

“You got it, big guy.” Bending one arm, Bull tucks it beneath his head. “Wanna hear about this latest job? As it turns out, Rocky makes a surprisingly convincing grandmother.”

Dorian lets out a scratchy chuckle and then hums an affirmative. Bull launches into the story with enthusiasm, though he keeps his voice low, and he talks long past the time when Dorian’s breathing turns slow and even.


	21. Dorian comes home

As soon as Dorian rides through the gate, he can see Bull waiting on the porch of the villa, but he sidesteps his mare to the stable, savoring the moment of delicious anticipation a little longer. He hands the reins to the stablehand, asks about the weather, the harvest, as is proper of a landowner just returned, and only then excuses himself. His saunter out the stable door is casual enough despite the tremble in his knees, but his breath hitches in his chest when only a short stretch of gravel path separates him from his lover.

“Look who showed up at my door,” Bull drawls as he approaches.

“Your door?” Dorian replies in the same tone. “Remember who bought and paid for this villa.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t here when the hinges gave out.” Bull jerks a thumb over his shoulder as Dorian climbs the few stairs to the porch.

Although he can feel the heat of Bull’s skin, Dorian steps around him instead of touching. Expecting to see weathered gray coated in climbing ivy, he sees instead a door stained almost black, thick and unadorned. 

“Woodworking, amatus?” he asks over his shoulder. 

Bull shrugs, though pride shines in his smile. “Keeps the hands busy.”

Dorian reaches out, brushes his fingertips against the smooth wood, then flattens his palm to press harder. The door is solid, no give, no creak, hanging straight and true even when he leans his weight against it, and his heart catches, just a little.

“It’s well done,” he murmurs. Then he glances back again, unable to fight the upward twitch of his lips. “Planning to give Rainier some competition?”

Bull laughs and reaches for him, but Dorian holds up one hand. The other reaches into his breast pocket. The parchment tucked there no longer crinkles; his repeated smoothing and refolding has worn it soft. He pulls it free and extends it to Bull with an unsteady hand.

“Fortunately for my reputation of impeccable manners, I have a gift to offer you in return.”

Bull’s smile shifts to a questioning frown, and he takes the document without touching Dorian’s fingers. The gold wax on its front is cracked, but the seal is still decipherable, and Dorian knows Bull’s eye will catch it. The paper unfolds in his large hand, and he barely scans it before looking back to Dorian, brow furrowed.

“A commendation from the archon?”

Dorian nods and swallows down a throat gone thick. “Hand-delivered by the man himself. On the day of my retirement.”

“Retirement?” Bull’s head jerks up, one horn nearly gouging the clean wood of the new door.

“Yes,” Dorian replies, and though tears prick at his eyes, he can feel them shining as he grins. “I’m home for good, amatus. If you’ll have me.”

For a moment, Bull only stares, his eye wide and round. Then he lets out a whoop that sets Dorian’s ears ringing. He scoops Dorian up in still-strong arms and kicks out with one foot to set the door slamming back against the interior wall. As they cross the threshold, Dorian clucks his tongue at the scuff on the beautiful black wood.

“I’m going to make you fix that, you know,” he murmurs, clinging tight to his lover’s neck.

“Anything.” Bull breathes deep with his nose buried in Dorian’s hair. “Every crack.” He pulls back to gaze down, and the light in his eye could rival the sun. “Welcome home, kadan.”


	22. Dorian pays Bull a visit

Someone knocks on the door, and Bull draws in a breath to answer, then winces and wraps his hand over his injured side.

“Yeah?” he manages, though it comes out more like a grunt.

The door cracks just wide enough for Dorian to poke his head through. His eyes flick down to the bandages covering Bull’s torso. “Krem said you’d been injured.”

Bull shrugs. “Busted a few ribs. Nothing serious.” Then he grins. “How was the mire?”

“Ugh,” Dorian replies, and his eyeroll speaks volumes. He hesitates on the threshold a moment longer before stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “I don’t care how rare dawn lotus is, it’s not worth returning to that wretched place.”

He approaches the desk where Bull sits in a straight-backed chair to keep from putting pressure on his injury. Idle fingers pluck a book from the edge, leafing through it before setting it down again.

“Can I get you anything?” he asks, though his eyes are still tracing the grain of the desk’s wood.

“Nah, I’m good.” Bull takes in Dorian’s bent head, the way he shifts from foot to foot. He wishes he could lean forward to try to catch his eye. “I probably won’t be up to our normal activities for a few days.”

That brings Dorian’s head up. “Well, yes. Of course.” He waves a hand in the direction of the bandages. “Obviously.”

Bull nods. “Right.”

Soldiers’ shouting out on the training yard floats through the open window. Gaze drawn by the sound, Dorian crosses his arms over his chest and then sets them down at his sides again. Bull counts his breaths, betting with himself how many will pass before Dorian excuses himself now that sex is off the table.

Five pass before Dorian’s lips part, and Bull is already nodding, lifting a hand to wave away his excuses. It ends up half-raised, hovering awkwardly when Dorian clucks his tongue and crosses to the bed.

“So?” he says as he sits on the edge. He crosses one leg over the other and looks at Bull, eyebrows raised in an expectant expression.

Bull lowers his hand to his knee and feels his own brow furrow in confusion. “So?”

“Let’s hear it,” Dorian prompts. “I’m sure you’ll regale the tavern as a whole with the heroic tale, but as I so thoughtfully came to inquire as to your well-being, I’d say I deserve a preview.”

When Bull huffs a laugh, his ribs don’t protest. His chest feels lighter, warmer, and he’s grateful Stitches’s potion is finally kicking in. “It _was_ pretty badass.”

Dorian rolls his eyes again, but this time he’s smiling. “Naturally.”

A shaft of sunlight catches gold flecks in those eyes and the soft sheen of his skin. The breeze is coming through the window, so his cologne can’t possibly reach Bull, but he swears he smells it anyway. When Dorian leans back with his hands on the mattress and the muscles in his arms flex, Bull has to shake his head to pull his thoughts together.

“Right,” he starts, with a grin of his own. “So at first it was just the one giant…”


	23. Dorian and Bull drink with their friends

“And when did you know it was more than mutually beneficial release?” Mae asks him over the rim of her teacup.

Dorian ponders the question, turns it over in his mind as his fingers turn the crystal hanging from his neck. “It wasn’t so much a matter of _knowing_ as of _being_ ,” he admits. “You might as well ask for the moment I became myself.”

Though the words hold more sentiment than sense, the curve of Mae’s lips understands, as does the sudden sheen of tears in her eyes. Dorian lowers his own cup to grasp her hand, an apology ready to spill forth, but she shakes her blonde curls and pulls her fingers free to frame his jaw.

“You’ll see him again,” she promises. “I’ll make sure of it.”

* * *

“What’s with your face?” Krem asks as he slides onto the bench next to Bull’s chair. “You drink another one of Stitches’s poultices?”

“Nope,” Bull replies. “Just drunk and maudlin.”

“I’d tell you to take it up with the redhead behind the bar, but you won’t, will you?”

“Nope,” Bull repeats, his forearms heavy on the table. The crystal hanging from his neck comes perilously close to dipping into his mug of ale. “I’ve got a hankering for ’Vint dick, Krem. Nothing else will do.”

“Can’t help you there, Chief,” Krem says with a smirk.

Bull laughs, slapping him on the back. His laughter fades into a low belch, and he grimaces. “Shit. I better go sleep this off.”

“Uh-huh.” Krem takes a drink from his own tankard and waits until Bull is walking toward the inn stairs to call after him. “Give Pavus my regards.”

Bull laughs again and lifts a hand over his shoulder in acknowledgment.


	24. Bull remembers Seheron

The moments after a rift closes can be measured in pounding heartbeats and panting breaths, loud in the sudden absence of demonic crackle and roar. Reality catches up in a stutter, lurching back into place with a relieved chuckle from Blackwall, a laugh from Bull, a backhanded compliment from Madame de Fer. Sera is usually good for a whoop or two, but when Dorian glances her way this time, she holds up a hand. The tip of one pointed ear twitches, and her head swivels to follow.

“You hear that?” she asks.

Without waiting for an answer, she ducks behind a nearby bush and lets out an angry squawk. When she emerges, her arms cradle a ball of matted gray fluff.

“You singed it!” she accuses Dorian with a scathing look.

“It being…?” He creeps closer and discovers that the fluff has rather disarming blue eyes stretched wide with fear and pain. “Dammit,” he mutters as he observes the blackened burn of its left foreleg. “Well, the cat certainly wasn’t my target. Whatever possessed it to hide in that bush anyway?”

“Tryin’ to get away from your flash and burn, wasn’t it?” Sera grouses. She scratches the cat behind its ears, and it gazes up at her in desperate longing.

“It might have been me,” Elette offers graciously as she approaches, though the burn carries no acrid whiff of lightning. “Let’s sit beneath that tree,” she tells Sera, “and perhaps I can heal it.”

The two women wander off, and Dorian glances toward Bull. He expects indulgent amusement over their fussing or, knowing as he does Bull’s soft spot for strays, perhaps a hint of concern. He does not expect a stiff expression carved from stone or for Bull to stalk away toward the ridge of the nearby cliff. Confused, he looks back to Elette’s healing, but neither she nor Sera has an eye for anything but their charge.

Despite the unexpected length and depth of Dorian’s relationship with Bull, he has acquired no mystical knowledge of how best to handle his lover’s less jocular moods. They come rarely, but the weight of them is an intimidating thing, like the sudden slides of snow that block the high mountain passes around Skyhold. To wade through such a crush is daunting, but the alternative leaves Bull to flounder for footing on his own.

After all Bull has done to quiet Dorian’s demons, the least he can do is offer a rope.

(Alas, he thinks as he approaches the cliff, if only the rope were literal. Knots in the bedroom untangled so much easier than knots in the heart.)

The valley below the cliff lies shrouded in mist, but Dorian’s fairly certain Bull’s gaze would not see it even in sun. He is elsewhere, elsewhen, in a place and time Dorian cannot fathom. From what little he knows, he has no desire to. But his hand brushes an elbow, slides down a wrist, tangles with half-lost fingers to serve as an anchor to the here and now.

In response, Bull draws in a slow breath, then lets it out with equal deliberateness. He repeats the cycle once, twice, three times, and then his grasp tightens with gentle pressure against Dorian’s grip.

“Thanks,” he murmurs.

“I’ve scarcely done anything yet,” Dorian replies.

“It’s enough,” Bull says, though he still looks out over shadow and fog.

Dorian stays silent. Bull will speak or he won’t, but Dorian won’t push. Bull knows when to press him, knows that Dorian nearly always feels relief after a hidden hurt is lanced and drained, but some of Bull’s scars are too old and deep to be purged. Digging at them only cuts the sensitive flesh beneath.

“There was a viddathari,” Bull begins, low and even. “She was part of my first squad on Seheron. Had a habit of picking up strays displaced by the fighting and trying to find them new homes. The night I set her as guard for a stash of black powder, it was a cat. After the ’Vints lit the wagon, we couldn’t tell which bits were her and which were the cat.”

As he takes another paced breath, he squeezes Dorian’s fingers almost to the point of pain. “I forgot it until just now.”

“Not something anyone would care to remember,” Dorian offers, gazing up at the too-still face of his lover.

Bull closes his eye and shakes his head with the same measured slowness as his breathing. “I didn’t block it out. It was wiped clean. I wanted them to file down the broken pieces and fit them back together, but it left gaps. Missing bits. Like chips in a vase.”

When he opens his eye, he turns to Dorian, showing him a sorrow old in origin but new in feeling, a pieced-together spirit no longer content to simply function. Dorian’s other hand reaches up to trace the stubbled jaw and silence further doubt.

“Perhaps Hissrad lost pieces of himself,” he says with all the conviction he feels in the face of his lover’s pain. “I can’t be certain as I never met the man. But I know The Iron Bull, and I can say without question that he is whole and hale.”

That lone eye watches him, seeing more than any pair, and only crinkles the smallest bit at the corner when Bull’s free hand lifts to point at the patch covering the empty space of its missing mate.

Dorian snorts. “Whole in soul and spirit if not in flesh and blood,” he amends, and he raises the hand clutched tight in his to kiss the remaining digits. 

The glimmer of humor fades from Bull’s face, and Dorian knows the thorn at the heart of the wound still pierces deep. 

“If that alliance had gone through,” Bull mutters, “the Chargers wouldn’t just be dead. I’d have gone back eventually, and they would have changed what I remembered, what I thought, what I felt. About them. The boss.” His great shoulders shift with his next breath. “About you.”

“They won’t take you again,” Dorian promises.

“They didn’t take me the first time,” Bull insists. “I went willingly. I _forgot_ willingly.”

“And now you remember,” Dorian retorts and then quickly covers Bull’s lips to forestall the protest. “The memory was perhaps accidentally triggered, but you’ve opened yourself to it. You haven’t tossed it away as useless. It’s once again a part of you.”

He moves his fingers to the back of Bull’s neck and pulls him down for a firm kiss. “You may have noticed,” he continues, “that those of us outside the Qun have quite a few rough edges. You’re simply going to have to get used to not being sanded down and polished to perfection.”

Bull grunts, as near a laugh as Dorian imagines he can manage at the moment. “Nah, being polished is your job, big guy.”

“One does one’s best,” Dorian agrees.

“One does pretty damn well,” Bull murmurs. He holds their embrace a moment longer, then glances back to the clearing they’d left. “Pretty cute under all that scraggly fur though, huh?”

“Indeed,” Dorian agrees. His lips twitch upward in smirk. “Though calling Sera scraggly is poor form, even if true.”

“I’m gonna tell her you said that,” Bull warns, but the threat seems mild in the company of his gradually returning smile.

“Then expect me to appear in your bedroll when mine is overrun with inevitable lizards,” Dorian replies.

“Added incentive,” Bull says. He tugs Dorian back to the clearing by their joined hands. “Come on. We’ve probably got more kittens to save.”

“Hail to the conquering heroes,” Dorian drawls, but he smiles as well at the renewed lightness of his lover’s step.


	25. Dorian and Bull play a game

The rules of the game were simple.

Various diplomats and dignitaries often visited Skyhold as the Inquisition’s fame grew. The traditionally minded found themselves in the well-manicured hands of Madame de Fer. Those with business or contracts to discuss walked the grounds with the lovely Lady Montilyet.

But those more inclined to the _risque_ and _exotic_ received a personal tour by none other than an _actual Tevinter magister_ (or near enough to satisfy the tales they planned to carry back home).

Dorian flirted with the tittering young ladies who thought themselves bold to be in his company. He charmed the stiff-backed young men who wanted to take his measure for the good of the southern realms. He offered sly winks and elegant bows as he navigated Skyhold’s more illicit corners. (The vault library, with its massive tombs and picturesque cobwebs, was a perennial favorite.)

But the highlight of the tour, the only oddity that could compete with a mage of Tevinter, was a larger-than-life, flesh-and-blood qunari warrior.

When such tours were arranged, Bull placed himself at the training dummies, shirtless, painted in full vitaar, carrying the largest ax in his arsenal. The ladies gasped and clutched at Dorian’s sleeves (oh, he might be from evil Tevinter, but at least he was _human_ , for Andraste’s sake), and the men glowered and muttered to each other that had they come armed, they would have shown that ox-man a thing or two (likely their asses as Bull gave them a well-deserved kick in the breeches).

Dorian calmed their fears with raised hands and promises that the beast was quite loyal to the Inquisitor.

“Does that mean he’s tame?” the ladies would ask.

“Oh, my darling girl, of course he’s not tame,” Dorian would whisper in a not-that-quiet aside. “That requires a level of civility quite beyond them.”

“Does it follow that heathen religion of theirs?” one of the men would pose next.

That query was more delicate, and honesty would push outside the bounds of the game. “Well, he’s certainly not Andrastian,” was Dorian’s typical response.

“Can he understand us?” a wide-eyed ingenue half-hidden behind Dorian’s shoulder would venture.

And then the game would begin in earnest.

“Certainly not,” Dorian would assure them. “His grasp of Common is rudimentary at best.”

Then he would clear his throat, step forward to within arm’s reach of Bull (often to a chorus of terrified gasps), and announce the most preposterous insult he could conjure either in the moment or after a careful night’s preparation.

“Your fragrance is reminiscent of a herd of druffalo after midsummer mating.”

“Your bovine appearance is rivaled only by your appalling lack of hygiene.”

“Were you to attempt to stand on your head, you’d create perfect furrows for planting. Except of course that you’d be harnessed to the plow.”

Time and again, however, he failed to budge the blank and slightly quizzical stare Bull directed at his audience. He’d hide his sigh with a flourish as he turned back to the assembly, and Bull’s grin was always perfectly timed so that only he could see it, reminding him that drinks at the Rest would, once again, be on him.

(The true victory came when Bull met their visitors later, offered polite bows of recognition, and greeted them each in perfect Orlesian or Antivan or even, on one occasion, Rivaini, which never failed to ignite in Dorian twin sparks of jealousy and arousal at his lover’s brilliance. Back in their room, the latter would quickly win out when he praised Dorian in multiple languages as he kissed and caressed every inch of him.

“You almost had me that time, kadan,” he’d murmur.

“You’re far too skilled at playing the brute,” Dorian would reply.

“Good thing you know better.”

“A very good thing,” Dorian would agree, and it would be the last he’d speak before his mouth was otherwise occupied.)


	26. Dorian sometimes struggles

_Amatus_ is only a word. As is _Kadan_. Or _The Iron Bull_ or _Dorian_ or _love_ , when it comes to it. 

In his childhood, silence was a weapon, a threat, the thick consecration of a disapproving glance. In the end, it was the final weapon, the severing of ties in a locked room as he awaited a parental penance he both feared and still could not believe.

Silence was the estate garden, and his heart thundering in his throat, not from his hurried footfalls but from the unknown, yawning before him like the maw of a great beast.

Silence is Mae’s hand, usually so redolent with her voice, that falters over the words _He is gone_. He sees the words but does not hear them.

Silence is crimson pumping from a wound, his hands slick with the blood of a comrade, a friend, a lover.

Silence is the threat that hangs over them all. He has seen with his own eyes the windblown carcass of the world, the red crystal and green vortex that race to rip the very fabric of existence.

Words are his daily refuge, but in the moments after passion cools, when the blaze fades to embers, cold thoughts creep into the empty spaces of his brain. He teeters on the ledge where contentment falls to chaos, the carefully constructed walls broken down by all that is good but broken even so.

He is defenseless.

Until…

Strong arms. Warm skin. A heartbeat that murmurs, “No. No. Come back to me. Come and stay in this place that we have made. This paradise. This peace.” 

No words are spoken. No words are needed. Here he finds silence that soothes, that saves.

Here he finds that love is not just a word, after all.


	27. Dorian makes a bet with Krem

Glancing at the door of the tavern for the dozenth time, Dorian straightened in his chair as he caught a glimpse of… yes, it was her. Finally.

“Bull,” he muttered. When Bull didn’t pause in his story of a pirate he’d met in Dairsmuid, Dorian smacked him in the chest. “Bull!” he hissed.

“… So she said, ‘You can keep the goat. Just don’t call me Nanny,’” Bull concluded, and the Chargers’ table broke into a chorus of raucous laughter and groans amid rolling eyes and hands thumping wood.

Grinning, Bull took a long swallow from his tankard before curling his arm around Dorian’s waist and pulling him nearly into his lap. “What do you need, kadan?” he murmured, and a shiver went down Dorian’s spine at the growl in his voice and the warm hand on his hip and the smell of leather and ale.

“Well, _that_ ,” Dorian murmured as his own hand came down on Bull’s thigh, prompting another growl. “But first,” he declared in a louder voice, “I’m about to win my bet with your lieutenant.”

From farther down the table, Krem looked up from his wine as all eyes turned to him. The man grinned and tipped the bottle in Dorian’s direction. “All right, altus. What have you got?”

Not wishing to draw the attention of everyone in the tavern and embarrass the poor woman, Dorian leaned further into Bull’s chest and tilted his lips toward his lover’s ear. “At the bar, speaking with Cabot. Dark hair, burgundy robes.”

Bull’s gaze flicked from Dorian to the woman in question, but he knew Bull would see more in one quick glance than most people would notice after an hour’s staring. His lips curled up in satisfaction as Bull drew in an appreciative breath and nodded. “Nice.”

Dorian shifted his smirk to Krem. “I’ve made my cast,” he said. “The next move is yours.”

Throat bobbing, Krem took several swallows from his bottle before slamming it down on the table and wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. “Harding,” he announced.

“Hah!” Dorian crowed, and he turned to Bull with a triumphant grin.

To his shock and dismay, Bull’s answering smile turned sheepish. “Sorry, kadan.” He nodded toward his second-in-command. “You’re going to have to pay the man.”

The table erupted in another bout of hoots and whistles as Dorian grudgingly fished a coin purse from his pocket. He tossed it with no small force to his countryman, who caught it deftly from the air. “No hard feelings, altus,” Krem said with a wink while Rocky clapped him on the back.

“None at all,” Dorian griped, though as the Chargers had launched into song, only Bull could hear. He twisted in his seat, stretching his legs over his lover’s lap. “Harding,” he repeated. “Truly?”

Bull shrugged as he ran a hand over Dorian’s calf. “I’ve got a thing for freckles.” The hand lifted to cup Dorian’s cheek. “And moles.”

“Beauty marks,” Dorian corrected absently as he chewed the inside of his cheek. “And don’t misunderstand me, I mean no offense to Scout Harding. She’s lovely, and more importantly, she only becomes lovelier on further acquaintance. But _that_ …” and Dorian turned again to gaze at the elven mage still standing at the bar. They shared a passing acquaintance, and even Dorian hadn’t failed to notice the cascade of dark curls, the flawless brown skin, the willowy figure. Whenever she trained in the courtyard, a gaggle of Cullen’s soldiers always gathered until the commander shooed them away like a farmer guarding a henhouse.

“Really, Bull,” he chided. “She should be on a painting at the University of Orlais or, better yet, the imperial palace.”

“She’s hot,” Bull conceded, and Dorian snorted at the faint praise. “Just not my type.”

“I thought everyone was your type,” Dorian noted, settling back in his chair to face Bull.

Bull grinned. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t, especially if she was into it. But she wouldn’t be my first choice.”

“And Harding would?” Dorian asked.

Bull shrugged. “Between the two, hell yeah. I’ll take dwarven tits and ass over long legs any day.”

“How do you even…” Feeling his face heat, Dorian cleared his throat. “That is, how can _they_ …?”

“Ride the Bull?” Bull asked, waggling his eyebrow. Dorian scoffed but was suddenly aware of Bull’s hand creeping up his leg. “You’d be surprised what dwarven women are built to handle. Dwarven guys aren’t just thick in the arms and chest.”

“Hmm.” Dorian had only ever traveled and bathed with one dwarf, and he’d always assumed Varric was uniquely Maker-blessed in that area.

“ _But_ ,” Bull continued–and his hand had definitely made progress in its upward travels–“I won’t be taking any woman to my bed tonight.”

Despite his lighter pocket, Dorian found the corners of his lips curving upward again. “Oh, no?” he purred with feigned indifference.

“Nah,” Bull replied. “I got caught up with this one guy. Haven’t really been with anyone else since.”

“He must be quite something,” Dorian said.

“He is that,” Bull agreed. “Beauty marks…” His hand made a sudden detour to the rear. “… _and_ a great ass.” 

Before they’d become what they were, Dorian would have squawked in indignation to be groped so publicly. As it stood currently, he looped his arms around Bull’s neck and leaned in to nip at a pointed ear.

“Then I suppose I’m the winner, after all.”


	28. Dorian chooses Bull over the Inquisitor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a tumblr request: DORIAN IS COURTED BY THE INQUISITOR AND BULL. TO THE THE SURPRISE OF EVERYBODY HE CHOOSES BULL.

As Dorian fumbled for an answer to Bull’s… proposition, he felt heat flood his face. He was acutely aware of Bull’s arm beside his ear, the Bull’s hand splayed on the rock Dorian leaned against. He was so close that Dorian could smell the scent that permeated their tent, that unique combination of steel and sweat and horn balm. 

He was so close that Dorian could watch his expression change as the silence lingered. The easy, open smirk–so cocksure and carefree–cracked, just a bit, just a crinkle of Bull’s brow, just a slight downward twitch at the corner of his lips. For the first time, Dorian saw confirmation of his suspicion that Bull’s gregariousness was a mask, genuine, to be sure, but learned. Or perhaps redirected. Those cracks stunned him deeper into silence, simultaneously flinching back and desperate to see more.

“Oh,” Bull said. He rocked back on his heels, rolling his shoulders, nonchalance resumed. “Is that not where we’re going?”

Over Bull’s shoulder, Dorian caught a glimpse of Damon and Varric sitting at the campfire. Varric glanced at them but continued whatever complaint about the wilderness he was deep into. Damon’s gaze locked with Dorian’s, hazel eyes slightly narrowed, head tilted in a question. When Dorian looked back at Bull, his eye was narrowed as well. Because he’d caught the flicker of Dorian’s gaze. Of course, he had, damn him. The scarred lips tilted down again, but then he smoothed it all over, arranged the lines of his face into casual confidence.

“Ah,” he said.

“What?” Dorian snapped, annoyance flaring at both the Bull and himself, the one for resuming his mask after such a statement of tearing off robes and conquering and the other for allowing him to do so. He wanted the cracks to remain. He feared what would happen if they did. Easier to push back. That was their game, wasn’t it? “And no. It was very much not.”

Bull raised his hands, as if in surrender. The Iron Bull did not surrender. Certainly not to mouthy little ‘Vints. And yet he was speaking words of relinquishment–“Sorry. I read that wrong. Won’t happen again.”–and he was walking away, back toward their tent. And Dorian…

Dorian only watched him go. 

Was conquering what the Bull truly wanted? Was it what Dorian wanted? The words had rushed over him, through him, echoing the beat in his chest as he watched Bull’s lips form them, the deep voice a rumble down his spine. And yet… the promise had felt empty. Incomplete. Opening a space in Dorian where he felt the need for something more than a heated tumble, satisfying as it would undoubtedly be.

Wasn’t there room for something between conquering and surrender?

Shakily, he pushed himself away from the rock face. Damon wore his concern in an open frown now, standing with hands on his hips before the campfire. Dorian settled on a log nearby, rubbing his hands over his face, and didn’t object when Damon folded his lanky frame into the space before him. When Dorian looked up, Varric had that look, that speculative look like he was composing narrative even as he stood among them. A moment later, he was bidding them good night and heading to his own tent.

Another bout of annoyance had Dorian’s jaw clenched and tight. What exactly was there to speculate?

“Are you all right?” Damon asked.

Dorian glanced down at the man sprawled at his side, arms leaning back on Dorian’s log. The popping fire made his pale hair ruddy and brought out the gold in his eyes. He truly looked the part of a hero of legend. One could practically see hope ignite in the hearts of every man and woman who simply looked upon the Herald, and salvation wasn’t the only thing they hoped for.

“All right?” Dorian sighed. “I’m exquisite.”

The words had their desired effect, and a hint of Damon’s breath-taking smile returned. That was what men and women throughout Thedas hoped for, to see that smile turned upon them so that they might bask in its glory. And bask they did, for Damon dispensed it widely and freely, to men and women both.

“That you are,” he replied. But too soon, the shining smirk faded, replaced with a look of concern that Dorian knew to be far more rare and so far more valuable. “I can talk with Bull if you like. If he’s making you uncomfortable.”

“Riding to my rescue, Inquisitor?” Dorian said. “And me without my fainting couch.”

“Yes, yes, you’re a big, strong mage capable of looking after yourself,” Damon drawled. “I just don’t want you going along with something you don’t like simply to keep the peace.”

At that Dorian could only throw back his head and laugh. “What part of anything you know of me made you think that was a remote possibility?” he asked once he’d caught his breath. “ _Keeping the peace_ has never been my priority.” 

Damon grinned up at him, and for a moment, Dorian’s breath caught. He truly was a beautiful man, nearly as suitable for sculpture as Dorian himself. Certainly the weavers were busy with skeins of golden thread to capture their Herald in glorious tapestry.

“Good. Then feel free to zap Bull when he gets lewd.”

Dorian frowned at that, and one hand came up to smooth his moustache. “He’s not lewd exactly. Just… more direct than I’m used to.”

Damon’s grin didn’t change, didn’t falter, and yet Dorian felt the moment it was no longer Damon’s smile, when he became the recipient of the smile that all those villagers and nobles saw. “Ah.”

“Ah,” Dorian repeated, and frustration boiled in him again. “Ah. _Ah._ Why does everyone keep saying that around me? Why does everyone presume to know my mind? Why does Varric look at me with plotlines in his eyes? Why does everyone assume the Tevinter mage is so eager to hop into the bed of every man he lays eyes upon?”

Damon pushed upright from his leonine sprawl. “No one thinks that, Dorian.”

“Hah!” Dorian scoffed. “Tell that to the patrons of the tavern we spent last night in.” Damon opened his mouth, concern pinching his brow again, and Dorian waved him off. “No. Peace. Idle gossip makes no difference to me. I’m simply… tired.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he slumped with the weight of them. “To be truthful, I’ve had my fill of casual flings and heartless trysts. If that was all I wanted, I could have stayed in Tevinter.”

“Not every man wants that from you, Dorian.”

“Indeed?” And images of large hands tearing robes filled his mind again. Was that all Bull wanted from Dorian? Did Bull think that was all _Dorian_ wanted from _him_? “And how am I to…”

But his words fell to silence as he met Damon’s eyes. Those gorgeous eyes filled with every color of the sky and sea and fertile field, and that smile, the same warmth and humor as always but softened to something gentler. A smile Dorian had never seen. A smile just for him.

For a moment, his heart stuttered, his throat tightened. His eyes flicked down to Damon’s lips, smooth and unblemished but for where his freckles blurred into the pinker skin. That smile held such promise of devotion, of something more. His skin was flawless, his frame long and lean; his hands, though calloused, bore long and delicate fingers. He spoke like a noble with dry wit and scathing precision. He was everything Dorian had ever believed he wanted. The future unspooled before him like a divine vision, as if Andraste herself had laid her hand upon his brow and whispered, “He is chosen. Not just for the world but for _you_.”

But when Dorian inhaled his next breath, he smelled only steel and sweat and horn balm.

“Damon…” he faltered.

But Damon only nodded to himself. “I thought as much.” He laughed then, a quiet thing but not brittle. “Forgive me. I don’t mean to presume your mind again. But truly, there is no need for explanation. Broken-hearted as I am, I meant it when I said I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“Broken-hearted,” Dorian repeated lightly, and Damon looked up at him with a smile once again. “As if you won’t charm every man and woman from here to Qarinus before you’re done.”

“True,” Damon conceded. “But allow me at least one night of dramatics. For the sake of Varric’s book if nothing else.”

“Of course,” Dorian replied. “Maker forbid we deny the literary world that particular trope.”

Damon nodded again. “Spurred by a mortal man, the fabled Herald will rise from his despair and take his place as the Chosen of the Maker’s Bride.” His laugh rang out louder than before. “When I say it like that, it makes it sound as if I cuckolded the Maker himself.”

“If anyone could, dear man, it would be you,” Dorian replied.

“Are you considering taking the Bull up on his offers then?” Damon asked.

“Oh, yes,” Dorian retorted. “I can see your heart just _bleeds_ from pining for me. So much so that you wish to push me into the arms of another man.”

Damon shrugged. “I want you to be happy. If Bull can give you that, you should take it.”

“Ridiculous man,” Dorian murmured. “You have a reputation as a scoundrel, you know. If the masses only knew…”

“You,” Damon said, as he pushed to his feet, brushing bits of grass and pine needles from his pants, “are avoiding the question.”

Standing with the fire behind him, most of Damon’s expression was lost to shadow as Dorian looked up at him. It made the admission easier. “I… don’t know. Perhaps I would if I were certain what exactly he is offering.”

“You could ask him,” Damon suggested.

“There you go, being reasonable again.” Dorian sighed as he rose to his feet as well. “If you keep it up, I’m going to tell Josephine you’re a responsible leader.”

“You wouldn’t dare. She’ll make me speak to Orlesians and sip Antivan wine.”

“You love Antivan wine,” Dorian noted.

“I deny any and all involvement related to the bottles missing from her private reserve. Even if I plan to spend the rest of the evening drinking one.”

Dorian clucked his tongue. “And you aren’t going to share?”

“With the man I’m drinking to forget?” Damon asked. “Defeats the purpose.”

Another moment passed as they stood together before the fire, another moment with a whiff of promise, another moment when Dorian could reach out and snatch back what he had thrust away. He leaned in and pressed a chaste kiss to Damon’s jaw.

“I do adore you, you know,” he murmured.

A hand clutched at his elbow, squeezing, holding tight for just a moment. Then it let go.

“Ask him,” Damon prompted, and then he turned to walk to the tent he shared with Varric.

When silence fell again, when Dorian stood alone in the wilderness, he gazed up at the distant stars. They blurred for a moment, chased by a prickling in his eyes. He sniffed and blinked, and they resolved themselves again into discrete flickers and well-known patterns. He took a deep breath of the clean, crisp air, imagining it flowing through his blood, through his veins, reaching every inch of him and cleansing fear and guilt and sorrow away. Then he turned the opposite way from Damon toward the tent he shared with Bull.

Bull’s breathing stayed deep and even when Dorian ducked inside, but he knew the other man would never sleep through someone drawing so near. Even so, he let the quiet linger as he sat on his bedroll and pulled off his boots. He could simply undress. He could undress and curl up in his bedroll and let Bull continue his charade of sleep. He could let it all slip by.

Or he could be the man that Damon was, to ask the question even if he wasn’t confident he’d like the answer. 

His next deep breath filled him with Bull.

“Is conquering what you want then?” he asked into the silence.

The question hung, gracelessly, until Dorian almost imagined Bull really was asleep. Then the deep voice rumbled through him again.

“Not if it’s not what you want.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“What is the question?”

“Maker-damned spy,” he muttered. “Must you make everything an interrogation?”

Fabric shifted across the tent, and the silhouette of Bull’s horns cut through the glow of the campfire as he sat up. “It’s pretty simple. I want what you want. Whatever you want is what I’ll give.”

“And you think I want to struggle helplessly?”

“Not for real, no.” Dorian could barely make it out when Bull raised a hand to scratch at the base of one horn. “But for fun, for pleasure? That’s usually what people are looking for from the seven-foot qunari.”

Dorian swallowed against the racing of his heart. “And if that’s not what I’m looking for?”

Bull huffed a laugh. “What? You want roses and candlelight?”

“Nothing so cliche,” Dorian scoffed. “I’m not Cassandra.” His fingers twisted in his blanket. “But is the thought of something more than sex so terrible?”

When silence fell again, he was sure Bull could hear how quickly his breath came in his chest.

“Not terrible,” Bull murmured. “Just… foreign, I guess. No one’s ever wanted more from me.”

“I doubt that. You’ve likely left a score of broken hearts behind you without even knowing.” The words brought Damon back to his mind, and Dorian winced before setting the thought aside.

Bull scoffed. “’Cause when people look at me, they get all soft and mushy.”

“Why not?” Dorian asked, forgetting his own nervousness in Bull’s dismissal. “You’re intelligent, you’re a confident leader, and, unlike most people, you actually give a damn. You’re more than just muscles and horns, you great oaf.”

“Yeah, the insults kind of undermine what you’re selling, big guy,” Bull said. “But… thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Dorian replied. He waited for Bull to say more, but the infuriating man simply lay back on his bedroll.

“Well?” he prompted.

“Well what?” Bull asked.

Dorian rolled his eyes and blew out an exasperated sigh. “Are you interested in more than sex?”

“I don’t know,” Bull said softly, and Dorian’s chest squeezed tight around the stutter of his heart. Perhaps Damon would share that bottle of wine after all.

He was a moment away from crawling to the tent flap when a large hand crossed the space between them to rest on his knee. Dorian froze, his body, his breath, his heart all pausing to feel the weight of those fingers.

“Could be fun to find out, though,” Bull continued.

The air escaped Dorian’s lungs in a breathy laugh as he returned to his place in the world. “That’s one word for it, I suppose.”

“No roses, huh?” Bull asked. “How about violets? Or a nice frangipani maybe?”

“Flowers aren’t actually an integral part of the process.”

“I’m pretty sure all the books have flowers.”

Dorian groaned. “Please tell me you won’t read books on the subject. Especially Varric’s books.”

“Aw, come on, big guy. I know how much you love research…”


	29. Felix stays with the Inquisition

As Bull catches sight of a bowed figure leaning against the parapet, he quickens his pace. Not to a run, not quite–the figure isn’t slumped or tilting out over the sheer drop–but to a lope just short of a jog. He eases up when he sees that Felix’s eyes are lifted, that he’s gazing out at the mountains, not resting his head on the stone or breathing hard. In profile, it’s hard to read his slight smile. Could be serenity. Could be resignation. But it’s a smile and not a grimace, and all things considered, Bull’s willing to call that a win.

Felix glances up as Bull approaches, and his smile widens when Bull leans beside him on the next merlon over.

“All right?” Bull asks.

Felix nods. “Catching my breath. Enjoying the view.” A stiff breeze washes over them, snapping the banners, and true to his word, Felix closes his eyes and pulls in a deep draw of the crisp air.

“Not many ’Vints I know that would appreciate the temperature up here,” Bull notes. One ’Vint in particular ducks his head in his shoulders and gripes about the cold even in the courtyard at midday.

Felix’s laugh is knowing, a shared thought. “I’ve always liked mountains. There’s something timeless about them.” When he chuckles again, the sound is soft around the edges, blurred by the fate that separates him from all the people milling in the keep below. “Now I sound like my father. Like time is my enemy.”

“But you don’t think that.” It’s not a question. Bull can’t say he knows Felix that well, but anger’s tough to hide, bubbling up in the cracks. Even after a tankard or two in the Rest, even when he’s gone quiet, Felix observes, enjoys, takes in the commotion around him instead of brooding.

Felix shakes his head. “Time is…” His face screws up in thought for a moment before he lets it ease with a shrug. “Time is. Railing against it isn’t going to change anything.”

“The tide rises, the tide falls,” Bull offers.

“Yes,” Felix murmurs. “Exactly.” He crosses his arms in front of him, shifting his weight to ease some unseen discomfort. Bull eyes him carefully, ready to suggest they move inside, but the wind has put a bit of color in Felix’s cheeks and he seems content in his perch.

When he feels Bull’s gaze, Felix smiles again. “You’ll look after him.” That’s not a question either, and the end, the _when I’m gone_ , goes unsaid. The _him_ goes nameless too, the only him they hold between them.

Bull’s huffed laugh is subdued, hushed, suitable to this quiet space Felix has carved into the stone. “Is this the part where you ask me my intentions?”

“No,” Felix replies, his lips still turned up. “Mostly because I don’t think you’d have an answer.” And it’s rare enough for people to have that good a read on Bull that he doesn’t respond.

“But,” Felix continues, “even if you stop sleeping with him, you’ll look after him. Not for the Inquisition but because he’s Dorian.”

Bull looks away, toward the place where the sky touches the peaks, beyond which the world is tearing itself apart. As long as the boss is up and fighting, the rest of them are supplemental. Dorian’s a key figure, no doubt in Bull’s mind, but he’s just a piece of the whole. Like Bull. Like the Chargers. 

When had the pieces become as important as the whole? If Bull could remember the moment, he could trace back his path to where the big turn came. Instead it’s lost, somewhere in the hills behind him.

“Yeah,” he says to the mountains. “I’ll look after him.”

“He’ll let you,” Felix tells him, and that feels… like something. Something important. Another fork, this time in the road ahead. Bull can almost see it coming, can feel it like a storm on the horizon that makes his bum knee ache. Except the ache is somewhere deeper, in a place that has a name, a word his lips have half-formed when Dorian’s in his arms.

“Maybe,” Bull replies, though he’s not as sure.

“Maker’s blood,” Felix suddenly sighs, “I’m going to have to stay around long enough to make sure you two don’t make a mess of this, aren’t I?”

Bull grins at him. “Probably.” He nods to the shingled roof beyond the next tower. “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink for your trouble.”

“As long as it’s not Ferelden beer,” Felix says, pushing himself upright. “I’ve been poisoned enough.”

“I’ll get us some maraas-lok,” Bull tells him as they head to the tower door. “Knock the Blight right out of you.”

When Dorian finds them later, when his bemused smile turns to delight to see Felix singing and laughing with the Chargers, when he cozies up next to Bull, warm and pliant, and murmurs “Thank you” into his ear, the storm on the horizon starts to look more like the rising sun.


	30. Dorian sees Bull without his eyepatch for the first time

After trudging up and down and through arid desert canyons, Dorian concluded that Sera was correct: the oasis was a sight beyond beauty. She watched with a smug smirk as he gazed open-mouthed at the haven they had just stumbled upon.

“Told ya,” she said. “Much better now too. Doesn’t have a giant in it anymore.”

“I couldn’t bring Dorian until we’d dealt with it,” Virassan noted. “Nature and a giant? He’s much too delicate.”

“So glad you’ve finally noticed,” he said. He shaded his eyes with one hand as he peered up at the topmost edges of the temple they’d come to explore. “I only wish you had figured that out before the mire filled with corpses.”

“You like corpses,” she replied with a smirk.

“I don’t _like_ corpses,” he insisted. “I simply find them useful. Like manure. I understand its utility, but that doesn’t mean I want to roll around in it.”

“You calling a halt, boss?” Bull asked. He’d stepped away a few paces, standing on the edge of the pool where it bent around the landscape.

Virassan glanced up, checking the position of the sun, then nodded and unslung her bow from her back. “Let’s regroup.”

Without another word, Bull disappeared around the curve of the canyon. Dorian watched him go until Sera, who’d plopped onto the ground right where she stood, poked at his calf. She grinned up at him as she pulled off her shabby boots and threw them over her shoulder, where they were quickly joined by a pair of mismatched socks.

“This,” she declared with the air of a docent in a museum of priceless treasures, “is the grand part.” Then she slid her feet into the water and slumped back along the bank with a groan that was borderline obscene.

Virassan snorted, but she wasted no time setting down her quiver and pack and sitting to slip her already-bare toes into the pool. Whether she could feel it or not was a matter for debate. Dorian, for one, was convinced their illustrious Inquisitor had feet carved from stone.

His own feet felt far too much--each grain of sand, each rub of rough leather. He settled himself on what seemed to be the driest part of the bank, then bent to remove his own boots and socks. Grit crunched with every wiggle of his toes, and he wrinkled his nose. He dipped the largest toe of one foot into the clear water and was delighted to discover it was cool but not cold. As he lay back, cushioning his head on his pack, he had to stifle a moan.

Minutes trickled by as the three of them rested in quiet contentment. Leaves rustled above, interceding between them and the harsh sun. On the edge of dosing, Dorian felt that if he opened his eyes, he would see instead the wide canopy of a banyan tree and hear the trilling of roosting peacocks. That at any moment Felix would come and nudge him awake, and they’d troop down to supper, laughing and taunting.

When a hand did come to rest on his shoulder, he startled, momentarily lost to a dream of a different land. If Virassan noticed, she didn’t comment. Instead she nodded toward where Bull had disappeared.

“We need to get moving. Bring him back, would you?”

A protest formed on Dorian’s lips, reluctant as he was to leave his relative comfort, but he was male, shared Bull’s tent, and, as everyone now knew thanks to Bull’s tendency to flaunt their activities, also shared his bed on occasion. He was the one least likely to see anything new in the midst of whatever ablution had kept Bull so occupied. Besides, any refusal risked teasing from Sera about lovers’ spats or some other nonsense.

With regret, he redonned his socks and boots, which not even a vigorous shaking could clear of sand. When he rose to his feet, he thought he’d escaped Sera’s notice, but as he walked away, she called after him.

“If he’s got his thing out, just give it a quick yank, yeah? Magic fingers. Pish pish done.”

Dorian paused for a moment, closing his eyes and raising his face to the heavens in a silent plea for strength before continuing on with a shake of his head.

He followed the stream of water around a bend in the canyon, where it narrowed and then widened into a smaller tree-surrounded glade. Bull sat on a rock at the edge of the pool, shoulders hunched, boots and hands in the water. A twig snapped beneath Dorian’s heel, and tension stiffened Bull’s frame. Dorian realized too late that he had approached on Bull’s left. 

“Just me,” he announced. “I’ve been sent to fetch you like an errand boy, which quite frankly is a scandalous waste of my talents.”

Bull’s attempt at a laugh sounded more like an annoyed grunt. He didn’t turn from the water. “Boss is getting antsy, huh? Tell her I’ll be right there.”

A dismissal if Dorian had ever heard one. He clucked his tongue. “And now you. Have I been demoted to messenger without my knowledge?” 

He moved closer, keeping his footfalls heavy and audible. Bull’s hands cupped something small beneath the water.

“What _are_ you doing?” Dorian asked.

A beat of silence passed, uncharacteristic for Bull, and Dorian expected to be dismissed again. Perhaps this time he would even listen.

“Some sand got under my eyepatch,” Bull replied.

With context, Dorian was able to identify the tooled leather in Bull’s hand, and he glanced at the back of Bull’s head, where a faint line remained impressed in the skin. He’d never seen Bull without the patch. He didn’t take it off when they shared a tent, not to sleep, not even in the handful of times they’d been intimate.

“Ah,” Dorian said. “Uncomfortable, I would imagine.”

Bull grunted again. He lifted the eyepatch from the water and set it on his knee before leaning down to cup a handful of water and splash it on his face.

“Here,” Dorian offered. “Let me see.”

He took another step toward Bull but stopped an arm’s length away. Bull shifted his seat on the rock, tilting his head as if easing a cramp in his neck; Dorian would name the movements nervous tells were it anyone but Bull. When Bull turned, his gaze skirted the edge of Dorian’s, and he looked away toward the water when Dorian closed the distance between them.

The space where Bull’s eye had been was both worse and not as bad as Dorian expected. Instead of a sunken socket, the scars dipped over an uneven gnarl of tissue, and for the first time, Dorian realized that the flail that took the eye likely broke bone as well. The scars were more defined, discrete lines that made clear the path of the lash. Dorian could hardly imagine the pain, and Bull had endured it for a complete stranger. His body was a living monument to such wounds, and still he never hesitated to rush to the front of battle, to put himself between a companion and danger. Sometimes Dorian didn’t know whether to admire him or worry for his sanity.

But he’d spent too long in silent observation, and Bull’s shoulders had regained their stiffness. Dorian placed his hands--not too gentle--against Bull’s brow, angling his face toward the light, pretending his evaluation had been clinical. The bright sun gave Bull an excuse to squint closed his remaining eye.

“It looks clean, but you’re a bit chafed,” Dorian murmured, smoothing his thumb over the new red marks overlaying the ragged old. “I can heal it if you like.”

Dorian felt the faintest twitch beneath his fingers, a hint of Bull’s impulse to pull away. Instead he sighed--and stayed. “I thought you weren’t much of a healer.”

“I’m not,” Dorian admitted. Once he had crowed it, sure his gifts were beyond such mundane practicalities. Foolish pride. “But I can handle minor wounds. Scratches, blisters. If you ever suffer a particularly vicious paper cut, I should be the first to whom you run.”

Bull’s chuckle was low but not entirely without humor. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Yeah, all right.”

Dorian brushed his fingertips across Bull’s skin again, not tenderly, but with awareness of the weight of what Bull had allowed. Cooling the irritated skin required only a trickle of mana. Beneath it, he could feel how twisted the old tissue was, how beyond salvation, and he kept his magic at a respectful distance from what could not be healed.

“There,” he murmured, as the red faded to pink and then gray. “Good as… well, not new obviously, but better than it was.”

“Thanks,” Bull said. He shook the eyepatch in his hand, and glittering drops fell to scatter along the pool’s surface. As he donned it, Dorian watched, memorizing the movements, noting the worn leather and fraying cord. He would need a new one soon. Where did one procure such an item? Perhaps Varric would know.

“Yes, well, now that you’ve recovered, we should get back before Virassan and Sera leave without us,” Dorian said.

“Wouldn’t be so bad,” Bull replied as he pushed to his feet. “I can think of a few things we could get up to in that water.” As they began the walk back, he nudged Dorian’s shoulder with his own. “What do you say? Want to sneak out of camp later?”

It was far too easy to imagine. The soft gurgle of the water, the fresh scent of the shoreline herbs, the cool night air on dampened skin, droplets cascading over thick muscle…

A wistful sigh threatened to escape Dorian’s lips. He turned it into a sniff and raised his chin. “If it will persuade you to finally bathe, I must agree for the good of Thedas.”

Bull grinned at him. “Such a hero,” he said, and he briefly raised Dorian’s knuckles to his lips before walking ahead through the narrowest part of the canyon. Dorian followed, and if he felt warmth in his cheeks... well, he had gotten a lot of sun, after all.


	31. Bull appreciates Dorian's strength

Once the big dragon went down, life was supposed to get easier.

Their little team (and damn if Bull didn’t feel a thrill of adrenaline when he saw Dorian, Sera, and the boss waiting for him at the stables, all decked out in their dragon-killing gear) had taken down nine high dragons, a few dozen drakes, and what had to be hundreds of the little nippy bastards. Enough kills to have learned the rules, developed a rhythm, worked out strategies that had that researcher from Orlais begging them for write-ups for his monograph.

Then they’d gone after the Ravager.

The fight was something out of legend, too much for casual boasting in the tavern, something he’d hold close and share only with the team that’d been there.

The cleanup, on the other hand, was brutal. Bull had still been tangled up in the dragon’s legs when the boss’s final shot pierced her eye. He’d already hamstrung her, her wings were shredded from Dorian’s magic, she was bleeding from a dozen gaping wounds and peppered with long, wicked arrows. She went down hard, and the rest of the team poured arrows and magic and grenades down her gullet. In her death throes, her hind leg caught Bull square in the gut. He flew across the ancient arena, slamming against the crumbling walls in a cascade of debris. At the end of his stamina, his muscles burning with exhaustion, he couldn’t catch himself as he dropped to the ground. The crack of his bad leg snapping under his weight echoed in the sudden deafening silence that followed the dragon’s last roar.

Any of the other fights, that would have been it. He could have let the fiery agony shoot up his spine, allowed it to wash over him, let it slip into its place in the catalog of injuries and abuse that made up too fucking much of his personal history. He’d breathe and wrap the pain up, put it on its shelf, hide it behind a grimace and a few choice curses. The boss would force a potion on him, Dorian would hide his worry with jokes about the unlamented death of Bull’s torn and bloody trousers, and Sera would scamper off to the nearest camp to bring back a wagon.

Instead, the death of the Ravager brought even more dragonlings streaming into the arena. Crazed with the loss of their mother, they attacked from all sides, filling the arena with shrill, ear-piercing cries. Without even the breath to swear, Bull tried to force his feet beneath him, but even without the agony lighting up his nerves, his broken limb wouldn’t hold him. He went down with a crash that sent a pack of dragonlings, sensing blood, his way. Even sitting, he could swing his ax, and he ignored the ache in his back and shoulders as he bashed in head after scaly head.

Then over his horns, he heard the whistle of a staff in the air and the dull thud of a focusing orb connecting with bone. Bull didn’t take his eyes off the dragonlings falling beneath his swings, but he felt the spray of blood when Dorian’s staff blade found a target.

The mass around them finally thinned enough that Bull could see the rest of the pack swarming the boss and Sera. The two women fought back to back, empty quivers knocking against each other. Sera held her bow like a club in one hand, the boss had a small knife in one of hers, and they each held a flask, one filled with fire, the other ice. The rest of the hooks hanging from their belts held nothing.

“Dorian!” Bull bellowed. Quicksilver eyes caught his gaze, then followed his outstretched finger. Dorian’s face twisted with anger; he apparently still had the breath to curse. But for a moment, he hesitated, with a glance back to Bull and the few lingering, lurking beasts in the arena’s long shadows.

“I’m good!” Bull shouted, and he turned the swing of his ax into a gesture toward their two embattled comrades.

With a nod and a graceful turn, Dorian raced across the arena, his footfalls kicking up a cloud of dust and ash. He yelled as he ran, taunting the dragonlings, pulling their attention from their other victims. Most of the pack broke off and scurried to intercept him, and Bull waited with grim satisfaction for the moment the fire in his kadan’s belly would turn to a blaze in his hand.

But the moment never came, and ice churned in his gut when Dorian met the beasts head-on, slamming into them without mana, with nothing but his shoulder and his staff. 

“Fuck!” Bull shouted, taking out a dragonling that ventured too close. Only a pair remained near him, and they pulled back, wary of the one-eyed creature that sliced off their heads even when crippled. “Fuck! Dorian!” He tried to rise again but only collapsed hard onto one knee, his broken leg dragging behind.

Sera and the boss threw their final tempest tricks, and fire and ice bloomed around them. The few dragonlings that hadn’t abandoned them for Dorian lit up and screamed in agony or froze in place, mouths wide in a soundless cry. The women raced toward Dorian, dancing through the path of still-twitching corpses his staff blade had left behind, slashing and bashing at the rear of the half-dozen dragonlings still pursuing him. The two that had been guarding Bull rushed off to join the fray, and he pushed the head of his ax into the sandy ground and _fucking made_ his busted leg function. He hobbled toward the fight, roaring a challenge of his own, and the pair turned, snapping. Swinging his ax dropped Bull back to his knee, but not before the blade sliced through both skulls.

When he tried to rise again, the pain whited out his vision and his free hand hit the ground. He raised his head with a shake to clear it. The static leaked from the edges of his eye with agonizing slowness, and a choked cry tumbled from his throat as his returning focus caught on Dorian’s form pinned beneath a dragonling’s bulk.

The dragonling was the largest of the pack, hulking and broad, outweighing its siblings by a good ten stone. The only other remaining beast moved with unnatural agility, snapping and twisting to keep Sera and the boss from reaching Dorian, even as the two women kicked and weaved, each trying to race to Dorian’s aid.

From deep in his gut, Bull summoned the last of his battle rage and pulled himself forward in an awkward half-crouch. He couldn’t rip his gaze from the snapping jaws inches from his kadan’s chest, held at bay with only the flimsy wood at the center of his staff. Dorian’s face contorted with the effort of supporting the creature’s weight, and his lips pulled back in a sneer of bared teeth. Drawing near (but fucking not near enough), Bull heard the growl slipping from Dorian’s clenched jaw. The muscles in his bare shoulder bunched and corded, and the growl rose to a shout as Dorian jerked his staff up and to the side.

The dragonling’s neck twisted, throwing it off balance for just a second, just long for Dorian to scramble out from beneath its claws. A second later, he’d rolled away, swinging his staff with both hands like a club before he even reached his knees. The blow caught the dragonling dead in the ridge above its eye, and its head turned aside again. The staff continued its arc, turning in Dorian’s hand, and the blade at the other end sliced through the creature’s throat. It huffed a cloud of red mist from its nostrils and then dropped to the ground and lay still.

The dragonling harassing the boss and Sera, realizing it was the last, lifted its head in a mournful howl. The boss’s sharp blade came down like a hammer and pierced the space between its eyes.

Silence fell over the arena again, unbroken by even a bird’s cry. Gray crept back into Bull’s gaze, and he toppled to his side, not even bothering to try and check his fall. His chest heaved, and new pain pulsed through his torso, the broken ribs he hadn’t even noticed. A soft groan escaped him, and he closed his eye. At least the sun felt good on his skin.

A strong hand gripped his shoulder. Bull squinted up at the face coated in grime and gore, at the mustache hanging matted and limp on one side, at the gray eyes wide with concern, and he smiled. He raised his own hand to Dorian’s bare shoulder, that teasing shoulder, smooth with dark skin and thick with muscle and slick with sweat, and squeezed.

“Damn, kadan,” he said. “You put on quite a show.”

Dorian’s eyes went soft with relief for just a moment before his brow knitted and his lips turned down. “No,” he ordered. “You do not get to have that look until you’ve been properly attended to.”

Bull raised his eyebrow with his smirk still firmly in place. “Attended to?” he repeated. “I like the sound of that.”

Dorian smacked his arm, gently. “Attended to by a healer, you great oaf.”

It felt like every rock in the arena was digging into Bull’s flesh, but he knew a good third of it was his own bone. “Yeah, all right,” he sighed. Then he smiled again. “You going to carry me, big guy? Lift me up in those big, strong arms that can toss off a dragon?”

Dorian huffed as he shifted to stretch out his legs and lie down on his back at Bull’s side, heedless of the dirt that would cling to his hair and clothes. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the warm sunlight. “Dragonling,” he corrected. “And it wasn’t nearly so heavy as you are.”

He rolled to his side, facing Bull, curling closer, letting his hand rest on Bull’s palm, too weary to be wary of anyone else’s opinion. “Let Sera carry us both.”

Bull chuckled, curling his fingers around the calloused ones in his grasp. “Good plan, kadan.”


	32. Bull gets sick

It began with a cough.

Really it began with Bull continually clearing his throat as he and Dorian struck their tent in the miserable rain of Crestwood. The cough came on as they trudged through the flooded caverns beneath the old city and faced waves of seawater and shambling corpses. By the time they headed back to the surface, Bull’s chest heaved with the effort of pulling in air, and they could all hear the rattling wheeze in his gasps.

Again and again, Damon asked if he wanted to stop, and again and again, Bull waved him off. He’d rather have a bed in Caer Bronach if they could make it by nightfall, he’d say. As the watery sun lowered and Bull’s pace slowed to shuffling, that began to seem less and less likely.

However slowly Bull walked, Dorian made sure he stayed behind him. Worry gnawed at his belly at the slump in Bull’s shoulders, the way they shook with each racking cough. He breathed a sigh of relief when the keep came into view, but halfway up the path, Bull stopped. Dorian darted forward when he saw the large form sway, and in a flash, Cole appeared from the front of the group to catch Bull on the other side.

Damon immediately hurried back to them, ducking his tall form under Bull’s arm and sending Cole ahead to alert the healer at the keep. Together, he and Dorian wrestled Bull up the path. The shaft of Bull’s war ax banged against Dorian’s staff, and all three of them stumbled over each other’s feet. The heat pouring off Bull’s skin and the effort of holding him upright had Dorian sweating in the chilly evening air. Guards met them at the keep’s gate, and an escort of half a dozen half-carried Bull to the nearest bed in a secluded corner of the fort.

A stout woman with gray hair in a neat bun and a grandmotherly air bustled into the room, calling for water and clean cloths and someone to stoke that fire, if you please. Dorian handled the latter with a wave of his hand, and the woman stared at him for a moment before nodding in approval. After that, all her focus was on Bull. She did not hesitate to climb into the bed with him, fluffing a veritable mountain of pillows behind him to hold him upright. She pressed competent fingers to Bull’s brow and throat and wrist, then laid her ear in the center of Bull’s chest. Only the crackling of the fire broke the silence as she listened, grim-faced, to Bull’s desperate breaths. In the dim light of the room, Dorian couldn’t be sure, but he thought the gray of Bull’s lips had taken on a bluish tinge.

The healer sat up again after an eternity of quiet. She dug in the bag at her shoulder, pulling out a pale pink potion. With a firm voice and a poking finger, she chided Bull back to consciousness and held him there long enough to drink the potion down. As soon as the flask was empty, Bull’s eye slipped closed again. Dorian had never seen him lie so still, not even while bleeding and battered after a vicious fight.

Climbing back out of the bed, the healer sighed and stretched her creaking back. “Fluid in the lungs,” she announced to Damon. “Keep a pot boiling on the fire with these herbs,” she added as she produced a small packet from her apron. “Keep the door and windows shut tight. Let the steam fill up the room, so he can breathe it. And we’ll need to keep him cool.”

“I can…” Dorian began, but the words came out too quiet. “I can help with that,” he said in a louder voice.

The healer eyed him again. “So you can,” she said. “Someone will need to stay with him. You can call me as you need, but I have wounded to tend.”

“Dorian?” Damon asked.

Dorian expected a flippant answer to escape his lips, to proclaim that warming Bull’s bed didn’t qualify him to play nursemaid. But the words didn’t come. Instead he nodded, swallowing down the fear churning in his stomach. Damon nodded back, an encouraging smile on his lips. Then he turned back to the healer and helped her set up the pot with herbs on the hearth and a bowl of clean water and a stack of fine wool handkerchiefs on the table beside the bed. The healer wet a cloth, wrung it out, and placed it over Bull’s brow. When the competent woman bustled out, Damon on her heel, she took with her the ragged shreds of Dorian’s confidence in his own ability to bring Bull any comfort.

His fears seemed confirmed when he heard a soft, distressed sound escape Bull as the door clicked closed. His heart jumped to his throat as he turned back to the bed and saw the creases at the corner of Bull’s eye deepen with pain or fear or delirium. He took a step toward his occasional lover. Unsure as he’d been of their arrangement, he’d never thought to fear approaching Bull in a bed.

His forward progress was short-lived, however, for the moment he drew near the mattress, he stumbled back again, letting out a startled yelp as Cole apparated on Bull’s other side. The boy-spirit paid no mind to Dorian’s alarm as he leaned over Bull; all of his inhumanly sharp gaze focused on the sick man.

“He thinks you left,” Cole suddenly announced, peering at Dorian from beneath the wide brim of his hat. “You always leave. You think he’s sleeping, but he sees you slip, sliding into secret shadows.”

Dorian swallowed against a tight throat and opened his mouth to speak, but Cole tilted his head back to Bull.

“‘I wish…’” the boy breathed, but his voice dropped into a lower register that sent a shiver down Dorian’s spine. Then Cole met his eyes again.

“He doesn’t know what he wishes,” he told Dorian. “It’s too new… the wishing, the wanting. Tools don’t wish or want. They have no will, no wistful words.” Cole shook his head, and his lips pulled into a puzzled pout. “I don’t understand. The Iron Bull isn’t a tool. Is he, Dorian?”

Gazing at Bull’s still face, hearing his ragged breaths, Dorian had to clear his throat before he could speak. “No, Cole. He’s not a tool.” Cole nodded in satisfaction, pleased at their agreement.

“Would you mind bringing us some supper?” Dorian asked, his eyes still on Bull, and Cole smiled his shy smile.

“Yes,” he confirmed as he pushed out of the bed and rose to his feet. “In the kitchens, there are bowls of broth and bread. The dog sneezed, so the bread isn’t burned.”

“That would be fine,” Dorian said, creeping near to the bed again. “Thank you, Cole.”

The boy vanished as quickly as he’d come, but even though no sound or movement of air revealed his departure, Bull’s lips moved in another quiet protest.

Taking a deep breath, wishing he could draw enough air for both of them, Dorian sat on the edge of the mattress at his lover’s side. He called ice to his fingertips, stroking them down Bull’s stubbled jaw.

“I’m here,” he murmured, heart pounding in his chest. “I’m right here.”

To his surprise, Bull’s eyelid fluttered. He turned his face toward Dorian’s cool touch and let out a hazy hum before squinting up.

“Dorian?” he rasped.

Dorian shushed him, trailing frost down to cover Bull’s burning lips. “Yes. I’m here.”

He felt movement beneath his fingers and had to lean down to catch the whispered word. When he heard Bull’s request, he pressed a kiss to his lover’s fevered brow.

“Yes,” he whispered back against the hot skin. “Yes, of course I’ll stay.”


	33. Bull warms up Dorian's feet

Before coming south, Dorian had never considered the difficulty of walking upon feet one could not feel. He had never noticed how many minute calculations, on a subconscious level, one performed while feeling one’s way over an unfamiliar, uneven landscape.

Since coming south, he had developed a healthy appreciation for his toes and the vital job that they performed. Sadly, he could not repay them with rest and comfort and instead dragged them through muck and mire and snowbound hills until they went mute in frozen protest. Then Dorian was left to stumble as best he could on his own unsteady legs.

The Emprise was particularly unbearable, and Dorian was sure his feet would never speak to him again. As Virassan bounded over the drifts with the ease of a lifetime spent out of doors and Cassandra and Bull simply plowed through them with brute strength, Dorian floundered behind, numb to the calf. Just as he was about to call out to them and ask for a halt, pride be damned, Bull stopped and turned. He watched Dorian’s slow progress with a slight tilt to his lips that made Dorian lift his chin and picked up his pace to a respectable hobble.

“Your footsies freezing again?” Bull asked.

Dorian meant to make a sharp retort, but his muscles ached and his breath came short, and on some level, even he could appreciate the ungainly picture he must make so far out of his element. “Already frozen more like,” he huffed with a rueful sigh. “I had no idea water could refreeze in such close proximity to human skin.”

Like a candle winking out, Bull’s smirk vanished, replaced with a furrowed brow of concern. “When did you get wet?”

Dorian gestured vaguely over his shoulder. “The last rift. Sending out waves of fire over a frozen lake does tend to have a melting effect.”

“Shit,” Bull muttered, and to Dorian’s surprise, he cupped his hands around his mouth to call ahead to their leader. “Boss! We need to stop!”

“It isn’t that bad,” Dorian insisted.

Bull looked down at him with an unimpressed expression. “You know that for sure?”

Dorian opened his mouth to respond but thought better of it as Virassan and Cassandra drew near. Virassan frowned up at all of them, a reluctant set to the hands on her hips.

“Problem?”

“Dorian soaked his boots in the last fight,” Bull replied.

For the first time since they’d left camp, Dorian felt his cheeks flush with heat instead of cold. “It isn’t as if I did it on purpose,” he said in response to Virassan’s sigh and Cassandra’s worried frown. “I didn’t see a puddle and think, ‘Oh, goodie! A chance to be even more frigid. I’ll just ignore this demon and jump right in.’”

“Of course not,” Cassandra assured him. Dorian was mostly sure she wasn’t being patronizing.

“Next time, tell us when it happens,” Virassan chided. Then she nodded back the way they’d come. “We passed a shallow cave just there. Looked dry enough. Cass and I will get a fire going.”

Cassandra and Bull nodded, and the two women set off. Dorian’s opinion didn’t seem to count after his questionable aquatic activities. When Bull wrapped a large hand around his elbow, he felt even more like a wayward child.

“I can walk,” he declared, shaking off the offending hand.

Bull held up his hands in surrender and nodded for Dorian to take the lead. So naturally, on his very next step, Dorian slipped on a patch of ice and flailed his arms in an inelegant arc, unable to regain his footing without the use of the feet in question. Bull gripped his elbow again and didn’t even have the decency not to look smug when Dorian looked up at him.

“Yes, all right,” he snapped. “The ’Vint is useless in the snow. Let’s all have a good laugh.”

“Nobody’s laughing, big guy,” Bull said as they began an awkward (at least on Dorian’s side) shuffle back down the hill they’d just climbed.

“Your smirking might be worse,” Dorian huffed. He let out a disgusted growl as he stumbled again, as unsteady as a newborn halla. “And we’d go much more quickly if you’d just carry me.”

“Probably,” Bull agreed. “But right now you need to keep the blood flowing in your legs.”

“You’re all being rather dramatic about this, you know,” Dorian muttered.

“Better safe than sorry. Losing even little bits can throw you off.” 

As he spoke, Bull held up his hand and waggled the half-fingers for emphasis. The sight had never bothered Dorian before, but this time he had to swallow down a sudden wave of nausea. He let silence fall between them and focused on staying upright instead of wondering how many toes lost equaled a noticeable limp.

They finally cleared the drifts and reached a flat, rocky outcropping that the wind had swept clean. Smoke already drifted out from a crack at the top of the rock face, and Virassan stood at the cave entrance, hanging a tarp to keep out the chill.

“We might as well stay the night,” she said as Dorian and Bull approached. “Cass’ll take first watch, and when I’m done with this, I’ll hunt us some supper.”

Bull nodded and held back one side of the tarp to let Dorian shuffle through. Once inside, they both breathed a sigh of relief. The fire had already warmed the small space, just large enough for the four of them to lay their bedrolls, and the natural chimney above pulled the smoke away. Bull grinned and immediately began to strip off the woolen cloak and leather jerkin he’d donned in deference to the cold. Dorian shook his head and hid his smile by setting down his staff and pack. When he turned back, Bull was bare-chested, sitting near the fire, and patting the space beside him.

“Bring those footsies over here, and we’ll see what we’re dealing with,” he said.

Dorian’s first instinct was to refuse the help, but it was a foolish one and he was not fool enough to obey it. Instead he sat at Bull’s hip and let Bull pull his legs over his lap, boots pointed toward the fire. Bull worked the small buckles with surprisingly deft fingers, and Dorian forced his mind away from the fear of what he would uncover and then the image of Bull opening other buckles. Instead he listened to the popping fire and the delicate, musical crackling of the ice coating his boots and allowed his weariness to clear his thoughts.

“Okay,” Bull murmured, and Dorian glanced down to see that all the buckles were undone. With careful slowness, Bull eased the boots off. Beneath, Dorian’s wool socks were stiff and creased with more ice. Bull’s enormous hands engulfed one of Dorian’s feet.

“You feel that?” he asked.

Dorian shook his head, biting his lip. Bull patted his shin reassuringly and then reached behind him to pull a flask from his pack. He handed it to Dorian, who took it, turning it over in his hands.

“Better to be drunk for this sort of thing then,” he noted with more lightness than he felt.

Bull nodded. “Even if there’s no permanent damage, it’s going to hurt like hell when they thaw out.”

Dorian took a deep breath and then a deep swallow. The combination proved disastrous, and he came up sputtering as his throat dissolved.

“Andraste’s dimpled _ass_ ,” he gasped, “what _is_ that?”

Bull grinned. “Maraas-lok.”

Dorian coughed again and wiped his streaming eyes. “Putting me out of my misery with qunari poison?” 

“Hey,” Bull protested, “that’s good stuff and I’m sharing. You should thank me.”

“I’ll thank you when my sinuses stop burning,” Dorian replied, but as Bull went to peel off his socks, he took another sip.

His swallow ended in a distressed noise, only partly because of the alcohol burn. The skin of his feet had taken on the gray waxy appearance of a Chantry candle, and he raised the flask again, drinking as much as he could stand, as Bull inspected each toe.

“Caught it just in time,” he finally said. Then he smiled at Dorian. “You’re going to be fine, big guy.”

A fine tremble went through Dorian’s limbs from more than just the cold. “You’re sure?” His voice sounded small to his own ears.

Bull nodded and folded his fingers around Dorian’s foot again. “Keep them moving though.”

The heady mix of liquor, exhaustion, and relief left Dorian lightheaded. He focused on drinking and flexing and bending his ankles as much as he could manage while Bull massaged color back into his skin. He squeezed his eyes shut in grateful prayer when he felt the first prickling of sensation return–prayer that quickly turned profane as the prickling grew to tiny knives stabbing every nerve.

“ _Kaffas!_ ” he spat. “How are they freezing and burning at once?”

“Don’t blame them,” Bull said. “You’re the one who fucked them up.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Dorian insisted again. He took another long drink from the flask and barely coughed at the end. “Damn this wretched place. This whole wretched country. Damn the hole in the sky and this ridiculous war. And damn Corypheus most of all, the massive tit.”

When he moved to pull his foot from Bull’s grasp, the cave spun a little. “And speaking of massive tits…”

With a bit of shifting, he straddled Bull’s lap, then wriggled down between his legs. Bull let out an amused chuckle and widened the gap between his thighs. Dorian lay on his back, bent his knees, and pressed the soles of his feet to Bull’s broad pectorals. He hummed his contentment when Bull’s hands came up to hold them tighter to the warm muscle. 

“Comfy?” Bull asked.

“Adequately,” Dorian remarked. He curled his again-movable toes against Bull’s skin. “Thank you,” he added in a quieter voice.

“You’re welcome,” Bull said.

They said nothing more, and Dorian dozed, despite the rocky ground, lulled by the steady thump of Bull’s heart beneath his feet.


	34. Dorian comes back from a mission ungroomed

When the horn announcing the Inquisitor’s return sounded over the keep, Bull didn’t lose his focus. He didn’t drop his gaze from Krem’s advance or lower his shield. Instead he watched and waited, bashing their shields together three times before Krem’s eyes flicked from him to the main gate. Then he went in hard, knocking Krem on his ass in the dust.

“Making eyes at my man, Krempuff?” Bull asked, extending him a hand.

Krem winced as Bull yanked him back to his feet. “Not my type, Chief.” He glanced over Bull’s shoulder, a smirk on his lips. “Especially now.”

Bull let himself turn at that and watched as the Inquisitor’s team dismounted in the courtyard. Vivienne and Cassandra, mud-spattered but straight-backed as goddesses in a fancy portrait, continued whatever discussion they were into as they headed for the main hall. Josephine met the boss at his horse, trying to look serious and failing miserably. The boss did nothing to hide his smile, and when he lifted her up, the sun shone on his golden and her dark hair, and damn if they didn’t look like something out of a storybook.

Once they’d finished their reunion and headed to the stables, Bull got his first look at Dorian in three weeks. First he looked for bandages poking out of ripped clothing. When he didn’t see that, he studied Dorian’s face. He looked normal road tired, not exhausted, not soul-tired like Bull had seen him once or twice. His mustache flowed into what could only be called a beard, though it was short and neat. The shaved sides of his head had grown out too, and the longer hair on top was pulled back and held with a leather tie.

He looked like Dorian but wilder, rougher, _raw_. Bull liked Dorian’s makeup, the sheen and shine of it, but seeing him without it was like seeing him out of armor, a glimpse of how he might let himself be if he ever felt safe enough to go unpolished.

The thought of Dorian unguarded, not just in Bull’s bed but out in the open where everyone could see, felt warm in his chest and in his gut. And lower.

Dorian’s smile made the warmth go hot. He didn’t walk over to the training ring, just continued to lead his horse toward the stable. Bull took his time correcting a few of the Chargers’ stances and racking his weapons, though from the knowing looks and taunts, he wasn’t fooling anyone. So he left the ring, sauntering over to enter the stable from the far side.

Dorian had handed his horse off to Dennett and stood in a secluded corner in the stable, ostensibly examining his staff blade for nicks. When Bull went to put his arm around him, he stepped back, but he was smiling instead of glancing around for anyone watching. 

“I smell terrible,” he warned. “What was it you said? Pork left in the sun?”

“That’s humans in general,” Bull said. “Not you.” Dorian smelled like woodsmoke and sandalwood, and it had been way too long since Bull could smell it on his pillow.

“Regardless,” Dorian sniffed, “you should let me find a hot bath and a sharp razor before you greet me properly.”

“Hot bath, yes,” Bull growled, and when he reached out to tug Dorian to him, he was finally allowed an armful of mage. “Razor, no.”

Pulling back to look up at him, Dorian raised an eyebrow. “Into the Fereldan look, are you?”

“Not always,” Bull said. “But right now… yeah.” He let his hand slide up Dorian’s back to tug at his hair tie. “I want to pull this out and see your hair in your face. I want to run my fingers through it and grip it tight while you suck me off.” 

He trailed his fingers down to Dorian’s bearded jaw. “I want to feel this on my thighs, my cock, my balls.”

His nails traced Dorian’s throat, and he hummed low when his fingertips dipped below Dorian’s collar and felt the chest hair he usually waxed away. “I want all of it, kadan. Just for tonight.”

Dorian’s face had gone flushed, and his lips parted on a caught breath. “I… suppose I can forgo the razor for one night.”

Then he grabbed Bull by the back of the neck and forced him down for a desperate kiss full of tongues and teeth. When he dropped back to his heels, they were both panting hard.

“Your room,” Dorian ordered. “One hour. Do _not_ be late.”

Then he turned to march imperiously away, which Bull ruined with a hard slap to his ass. Dorian shot him a reproachful moue, but his eyes glinted with banked heat.

“One hour,” Dorian repeated as he slipped through the stable gate. “Or I _will_ start without you.”

Bull grinned, imagining Dorian, bearded, sweat-soaked, and writhing, as he pleasured himself in Bull’s bed.

“Shit,” he said to a nearby mare. “He’s full of good ideas.”

She whickered in agreement and Bull patted her neck before heading out of the stable and back toward his room, mind full of the evening ahead.


	35. Bull and Dorian have a quiet moment after Corypheus's defeat

Somewhere between having a drink with the Chargers and helping Dagna put Sera to bed, Bull had lost track of Dorian. They’d sat at opposite ends of the table during the banquet, but Bull had fallen out of more than one conversation while gazing at his lover, and he’d felt Dorian’s eyes follow him just as often. Corypheus was dead. The war was over. A new world was coming, or the old one had returned. Bull wasn’t sure which.

He wasn’t sure of a lot. His old life was gone; there was no question there. Dorian’s was too, but he had plans, big plans, for not just rebuilding but rebelling. Shaking things up. That was what he wanted.

Bull just wanted… shit, he wasn’t sure what. His Chargers around him, hale and whole. A few tankards of ale after a long day of training. A pretty mage in his bed. By his side. At his back.

Flickers of light spilled out of the rotunda now that the main hall had gone mostly dark. Bull followed them, thinking Dorian might have snuck up to the library for a moment’s peace. Instead, he found his lover gazing up at one of Solas’s frescoes, two wolves flanking a sword with the eye of the Inquisition set in the hilt. In the dim pre-dawn hours, the bright colors faded. The servants only lit one torch in there anymore, a concession to those who were passing through.

“He’s not coming back, is he?” Dorian said, eyes still on the fresco, as Bull put a hand on his shoulder.

Bull didn’t know what happened the night the boss returned to Skyhold without Solas and without her tattoos. He wasn’t sure anyone knew; she didn’t talk about it and neither did Solas once he reappeared. But Cole had fetched Bull and Dorian around midnight, and they’d found her slumped in front of her fireplace, red in her eyes and booze on her breath. They hadn’t talked, but they hadn’t let her drink alone.

“No,” Bull agreed.

He felt Dorian’s shoulder rise with his soft sigh. “Varric will be next, I expect. Or Vivienne. Maker knows the imperial court will fall apart if it goes without her much longer.” He glanced up at Bull then, a grimace twisting his lips. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

Bull chuckled, placing a kiss in Dorian’s hair. Dorian sighed again, then turned and pressed himself against Bull’s chest. He fiddled with Bull’s harness, and Bull let the silence stretch, knowing Dorian would speak when he was ready.

“When do you expect the Chargers to decamp?” he asked, and Bull could feel his breath against his skin.

He shrugged. “There’s still rifts. All this shit has left most of the world a mess. The Inquisition will still need fighters, and the boys have gotten used to having a place to go back to between jobs. I don’t feel the need to take that away just yet.”

Dorian tilted his head back to look up at him with dark eyes. Bull scratched his nails along his scalp, and Dorian hummed in contentment.

“What about you?” Bull murmured. “Ready to take on the whole Magisterium single-handed?”

Dorian’s gaze lowered, and his fingers plucked at Bull’s harness again. “I… perhaps I should let the world get itself back in order before I change it. You’re right about the Inquisitor still needing help. With Solas gone and Vivienne leaving, I’m the only other mage she’s used to fighting alongside. It doesn’t feel right to leave her now.”

A warm feeling spread through Bull’s chest, like a good meal or a long drink after a hard fight. “Want to head up to bed?”

Dorian nodded, then smiled up at him, and though sunrise was a few hours away, Bull felt like the dawn had come. He slipped his hand down Dorian’s arm and laced their fingers together. They walked, hand in hand, out to the main hall of the fortress where precious treasures like the sky were held and kept.


	36. Dorian puts Krem in touch with someone important

When the crystal in Dorian’s hand turned warm against his palm, he couldn’t stop his lips curling in a slight smile. It only grew when Bull’s familiar deep voice broke the silence in his sitting room.

“Hey, kadan.”

Dorian glanced at the man occupying the other chair, but if he understood the Qunlat word, he gave no sign. He was too busy staring down at his hands twisting in his lap.

“Hello, Bull,” Dorian answered. “Is Cremisius with you?”

“Krem?” Bull repeated, his puzzlement clear. “Just down the hall. Why?”

“Would you take the amulet to him please? I have someone here who wishes to speak with him.”

“Who?” Bull asked, and the tiny note of suspicion might have pricked at Dorian’s heart if he didn’t know how protective Bull was of “his boys.” As it was, he felt a surge of affection and longing for his tender-hearted amatus.

“Please trust me, Bull,” he murmured.

The man sitting with him still hadn’t looked up, not even when Bull sighed and the sound of footsteps and a door opening echoed through the sitting room. Dorian rose from his own seat, pulled the chain of the amulet over his head, and took one of the man’s hands in his own.

“Here,” he said as he laid the amulet in the man’s grasp. “Like this. Hold it against your palm. That’s what keeps the connection.”

The man shot him a glance from beneath a furrowed brow, then licked his lips and gave a quick nod. The chain of the amulet jingled as his hand trembled.

“Pavus?” The sound of another familiar voice startled a gasp from the man holding the amulet. He fumbled for a moment before clutching it tightly to his chest.

“Cremisi–Cremisius?” he breathed.

Silence fell for one heartbeat, two. “Da?” came the whispered response.

The man nodded fervently, though Krem couldn’t see him. “ _Oh_ ,” he sighed with a hitch in his voice. “Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

As his tears began to fall, Dorian backed toward the hallway. He slipped out and eased the door shut behind him. Then he walked toward his office, his smile returning.

The candle of his desk had burned off nearly two marks when the elder Aclassi knocked and entered at Dorian’s response. He bent nearly double in a low bow as he extended the amulet to Dorian over his desk.

“And how is Cremisius?” Dorian asked as he slipped the chain back over his neck.

Aclassi looked up at him with red eyes, but a watery laugh shook his shoulders. “Krem… he is well, Magister.” He straightened and nodded. “My son is well.”

Dorian nodded back. “Very glad to hear it.”

“I can’t… how can I ever thank you for this, Magister?” Aclassi said. “First you return me my freedom and now my child…”

“My motivations aren’t entirely selfless,” Dorian told him. “I’ve seen your son’s stitching, and he said you’d taught him everything he knew. If that’s even half-true, I’ve snatched up the best tailor in the Imperium.”

“You will have my very best work, Magister,” Aclassi promised.

“Excellent,” Dorian replied. “I sometimes have dealings with this particular mercenary band at my country villa. Would you be willing to accompany me on my next journey?”

Tears filled Aclassi’s eyes again. “I would, Magister.”

“Good,” Dorian said. “And if you wish to tender your resignation from my service at that time, I would understand.”

“I’d have to think on it, Magister,” Aclassi said, squaring his shoulders. “My child’s grown with a life of his own. It would do my heart a world of good to see him now and again, but I enjoy my work, and if I can lend my skills to a man looking to make Tevinter a better place, I’m proud to do it.”

Dorian blinked and cleared his throat before inclining his head toward the older man. “Thank you, Aclassi. I’ll try to prove worthy of your very fine work.”

Aclassi smiled. “You’ve done well so far, Magister.” Then he bowed and turned to go, but some thought made him pause and face Dorian again.

“This Iron Bull,” he said. “Krem says he’s a good man.”

Dorian’s lips twitched upward again. “He is,” he affirmed. “Very much so.”

“Glad to hear it, Magister,” Aclassi replied. “He keeps good company, I know that much for sure.” When he smiled again, Dorian felt a hint of a flush pink his cheeks, but Aclassi resumed his exit before Dorian needed to come up with a reply.

He focused instead on the amulet, holding it at the proper angle to forge the connection with its mate. “Amatus?”

“Damn, kadan,” Bull replied, and his voice was full of joy and laughter. “You’re something else, you know that?”

Dorian grinned, mostly with happiness and perhaps a hint of relief that Bull didn’t think he’d overstepped with Krem. He’d grown close to the Chargers, perhaps more so since leaving Skyhold, but they were Bull’s family. “So I’ve been told.”

“Listen, I think Krem needs a drink or ten, but after we hit the local tavern, I want to talk to you.” Bull’s voice pitched low. “I want to tell you how fucking amazing you are.”

“My very favorite topic of conversation,” Dorian purred.

“And it’s going to be a fucking amazing conversation,” Bull assured him. “I’ve got some ideas I’ve been saving.”

A shiver ran down Dorian’s spine, and he waited a breath for his heart to slow before replying. “Don’t drink so much you forget them,” he urged.

“Not a chance, kadan.” Bull laughed aloud, and Dorian’s chest felt warm. “I love you, ’Vint. You know that?”

“Yes,” Dorian said, and he bit his lip to keep his grin from reaching foolish proportions. “I know.”


	37. Dorian helps Bull in the Fade

As Dorian strode through the Fade, the resident spirits gave him wide berth. He was focused on one figure, one presence he could feel, and his tenacity, the fixed purpose of his mind made the creatures of whim and whimsy shy away.

Stubbornness, his father had once called it. Whatever it was, it certainly suited Dorian’s purpose now.

The sense of the one he sought grew stronger, and he’d gladly thank the Maker or Koslun or whoever was responsible for the vague connection that led him straight to the man standing with his back to a shallow cave. Fen’Harel’s war had left the Veil stretched thin, worn in places like the knees of old trousers. Even dwarves could now stumble through the seams. Even qunari.

The Iron Bull did not enjoy his new forays into the land of dreams and demons. The first time it had happened, he had barked and bellowed, swinging a great axe and glaring at Dorian. Dorian himself had taken a moment to adjust to the vision before him, to his lover standing on uneven ground in the hazy green light of the Fade. Despite the confrontational nature of the meeting, he had been glad to be there, to soothe and speak words of comfort, even if they fell on deaf ears. When they’d woken back to reality, he’d held his lover, taming his trembling and assuring him Dorian _had_ been there, _would_ be there, that he would never be alone and abandoned, defenseless against demons.

Now when they met, the Iron Bull greeted him with wary warmth, gracious but guarded. Dorian couldn’t begrudge him that. So when he reached the cave, he allowed his lover to look him over with narrowed eye and clenched fists. He made no move, not even when the man he loved sighed soft and shook his head.

“I just don’t know,” the Iron Bull explained.

Dorian nodded. “I know, amatus. It’s all right.” With a wave of his hand, a table laid with a chess set and two chairs appeared between them. “Shall we play?”

“No stakes,” his amatus reminded him.

“No stakes,” Dorian agreed.

They sat at the board, as had become their habit. They did not speak as they arranged the pieces and made their opening salvos. Sometimes as the game went on, the Iron Bull’s disquiet eased, limbs loosening enough to lean back, to comment on Dorian’s move or his own. This time he stayed stiff, gaze glancing from the board to Dorian, the furrows in his brow creasing more deeply.

“Not your usual strategy,” he noted, as he captured Dorian’s mage.

“Considering how often you beat me, can you blame me for trying something new?” Dorian asked, sliding one of his pawns forward.

The Iron Bull only grunted. His fingers drummed on the table beside the board as he made his move, and as play progressed, his knee began to bounce beneath the table, signs of anxiety Dorian had never seen him display in the waking world.

“Where’d you learn this strategy?” he growled when Dorian moved his pawn again.

Dorian considered, moving through the mists of memory. “A friend. His name escapes me at the moment.” He pouted back at his lover’s frown. “Which only means I’ve forgotten, not that the friend was false or feigned.”

The Iron Bull blinked back at him, then looked down to the board once more. He took one of Dorian’s knights, but instead of setting the piece down, he held it, fiddling in his fingers. “Why’d you come looking for me?”

“You were hurting,” Dorian replied. “I wanted to help.”

When the Iron Bull looked up again, his eye was soft, serious. He opened his mouth to speak, but his sight snagged on something over Dorian’s shoulder, and he rose to his feet.

“Amatus!” a voice called from behind Dorian, and in a moment, a robed figure stood beside the warrior, brandishing a mage’s staff. The man glared at Dorian from behind his own eyes. “The game is over, I believe,” he said.

“You–” Dorian stammered as he stood. “You’re not you.”

The other Dorian sniffed. “On the contrary, it’s _you_ who are not _me_.” He raised the blade of his staff. “And I think it’s time for you to go.”

“Hang on, kadan,” the Iron Bull said, and both Dorians stared in surprise when he laid a restraining hand on the shaft of the staff and lowered it down.

“Hey,” he said softly. “You remember when the Veil was torn?”

“Of course,” Dorian replied, eyes locked on the double standing next to his amatus. “A hole in the sky is difficult to forget.”

The Iron Bull shook his head. “I’m not talking about Corypheus. I’m talking about the shit So–Fen’Harel pulled.”

“I–” Words welled like a wave, rising to spill through Dorian’s mind and tangle his tongue. “A hole then too. Bigger than the Breach, bright, blinding, brutal. I’m… I’m tearing, twisting, tattered, like a dress on a doll.” His eyes went to the Iron Bull’s, desperate and drowning. “The girl in the cupboard had a doll. He only wanted her to be quiet. He didn’t want to hurt her.”

“I know, kid,” the Iron Bull murmured, holding out his hands. Beside him, Dorian stared, lips parted. “You remember anything else?”

“Hungry and haunted, a bite in the belly. They called me a ghost. Rhys could see until a Seeker spoke spells. Words and words and then he can _see_.”

Dorian… no, no, he wasn’t Dorian. Dorian was _there_. Watching, waiting… wishing.

“You’re both wishing and wanting.” Their feelings fled, flying free, given form by his lips. “Is it him? Is he all right? Does he know who he is? What he is?”

He crumbled to the ground, clutching his head as their thoughts tumbled around him. “Dragon fire, everything burning. I can’t come in unless you open! Red on the snow. Singing, sparkling.” He rocked back and forth on his knees, memories cresting like a tide. “Another templar, not red, rotted and ruined. You killed me!”

A strong hand gripped his arm. “Come on, kid. You’re all right.”

He shook his head, spilling loose the flood. “He wanted to wake them, but his wanting warped the world.”

A voice on his other side, smooth and warm. “It’s all right. It’s all right now.” A tug on a thread, Fade made fabric, and something soft rests atop his head. “Maybe this will help.”

He reached up, fingers fumbling, curling, catching. A board brim bent against his brow, and he could bear it. “Torchlit tavern, Sera singing. Cassandra’s cadence as she reads Varric’s volumes.”

He gulped a breath, and the Iron Bull’s hand rubbed small circles against his shoulder. “That’s it. Come back to us, kid.”

From beneath the brim, he glanced up. “Dorian?” he whispered.

Dorian smiled down at him. “Yes, Cole?”

“Am I handsome?”


	38. Vivienne counsels Bull

When Vivienne extended the teapot to freshen Bull’s cup, she found him gazing out to her balcony, a thoughtful frown on his face. Her lips twitched downward to mirror his.

“Bull, dear, you’re brooding.”

He didn’t startle–he was much too disciplined for that–but he did shift his seat before leaning forward. “Sorry, ma’am. A little preoccupied, I guess.”

She poured the tea into his cup, the sweet fragrance a balm to her concern. “Something you wish to discuss?”

He sat back but didn’t raise the tea to his lips. Distracted as he was, she had no fear for her porcelain; his large fingers cradled the cup with the utmost care, as if he held a delicate, fluttering creature. “Just something that happened on the last mission.”

She poured herself a new cup before setting the pot back on the tray and settling more comfortably on her divan. “I was under the impression your forays went rather predictably and that the world was short several dozen more red templars.”

That teased an upward curve to scarred lips. “We’ve got a system.”

“An efficient one at that,” she agreed, blowing a cooling breath along the surface of her tea. “So what troubles you?”

Bull shook his head. “I don’t want to waste your time with trifles, ma’am.”

“Bull, dear,” Vivienne said, “we’ve discussed at length your unhealthy obsession with stripes of every width and fabric of every riotous color. Should you ever waste my time, you will be aware of it.” 

Bull snorted, impolite perhaps but endearing nonetheless. “Fair enough.” Then he hesitated a moment, uncharacteristically. “I shared a tent with Dorian out in the field.”

She nodded, more in encouragement than out of a grasp of why that should bother him. When he didn’t go on, she nudged further. “Another predictable occurrence of late.”

“Yeah, but this time…” He glanced down at his cup, as though just remembering its existence. Lifting it, he took a long, bracing swallow. “Not to be indelicate, ma’am, but there was a night we didn’t…”

“Engage in carnal pursuits?” she offered with a raised eyebrow. “Hardly a concern, darling. No couple that remains paired for any length of time indulges _every_ night into perpetuity.”

“Nah,” Bull drawled, then cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. “I mean, no, ma’am. It wasn’t that. We’d had a long day. Forced march, tough fight. Dorian had almost burned out his mana. When I went in the tent and saw him asleep, I was glad he was getting some rest.”

“As he should,” Vivienne replied. “Mana depletion is no trivial matter. I trust you know that,” she added, a light reminder.

“Yes, ma’am,” Bull answered. “I was just surprised he’d gone to sleep in my bedroll.”

Vivienne raised her cup again, to hide her slight smile. “Did he offer any explanation?”

As she’d half-expected, the lines of Bull’s face settled into a softness she’d seen more and more frequently in the previous weeks. “He looked up for a second, all bleary-eyed, hair and mustache a mess, and mumbled something about mine being warmer. Then he sprawled back out, burrowed in like a cat. He was snoring into my pillow a second later.”

“And what did you do?” Vivienne asked.

Bull shifted again, leading the chair beneath him to creak. “I sat on his bedroll and… watched him.”

Her smile threatened to spill forth despite all her efforts. “Wary of demons?”

Bull shook his head. “I just looked at him, like… shit, like one of Varric’s books.” He glanced at her, a rueful curl tugging his lips. “Pardon my language, ma’am.”

She waved his apology away. “And you’re troubled by your actions?”

“I felt like an idiot, ma’am,” Bull declared, but she could see the edges of his grin hovering.

Vivienne laughed then, bright and sincere. “Love does make fools of us all.”

“Is that love?” he asked. His grin remained, but something serious lurked behind the question. “Staring at someone while they sleep?”

“Not all of it,” she replied. “To be honest, darling, your revelation is rather cliche. There’ll be a great many other moments, both subtle and portentous, that will settle the matter in your heart.” She raised her tea and took another sip. “The question is,” she continued as she clicked the cup back to its saucer, “will you share this new information with Dorian?”

“Not sure I’m ready to risk it, ma’am,” Bull confessed. “I don’t like going into a fight without a battle plan.”

“Timidity doesn’t suit you, my dear,” she chided but gently. “We are none of us prepared for love. Except perhaps for Cassandra, if you can term poring over Varric’s latest manuscript as ‘research.’”

Bull chuckled. “A lot of those books have a lot to say about broken hearts, too,” he said. “Doesn’t sound pleasant.”

“Even broken hearts heal with time,” Vivienne assured him. “And though I would not have guessed it upon my initial impression of you and Dorian, I think you’ve bestowed your heart upon one who will treat it with care.” She fixed him with a narrow-eyed gaze. “And should he bestow his heart in return, I trust you’ll cherish it as it deserves.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he responded with alacrity. A bit of the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease. “Cherish, huh?” he repeated. “I like that. Sounds less selfish than love.”

“There’s nothing selfish in seeking a little happiness, my dear. Especially in times like these.”

“In times like these,” Bull countered, “the Qun would call seeking personal happiness the epitome of selfishness.”

“It also professed that you would turn into a witless beast without it,” Vivienne retorted. “I think you recognize now that the Qun does not hold all the wisdom of the ages.” 

He hummed in response, his fingers drumming for a moment against the chair’s arm. “I’ll think about it,” he promised. Then his eye took on a mischievous glint. “You’ll want a full report, I assume?”

“Of course, darling,” she said. “Allow me to bask in secondhand warmth. This world becomes a cold one when the one you love departs it.”

Bull’s smile faded, and he parted his lips to speak, but she only waved her hand at him again. “Run along now, dear. I have letters to write, and you have mages to woo.”

One of the qualities she appreciated in Bull was his ability to acknowledge a dismissal. He set down his cup and rose from his seat.

“Same time next week, ma’am?” he asked.

“Of course, darling,” she said, tilting her neck to look up at his large form.

Then, to her very great surprise, he went down to one knee before her divan. Both of his large hands enfolded her free one, and he raised her knuckles to his lips as gallantly as any chevalier.

“I cherish you, too, ma’am,” he said.

Feeling welled in her chest, gathered behind her eyes, tightened her throat. Her fingers squeezed his. “And I you, darling.”

He smiled, not with the gregariousness of the Iron Bull, but with the kindness of the man he was at his heart. He rose again with a faint grunt of pain, and she reminded herself to ensure he had a sufficient supply of the embrium balm that eased his stiff joints. He offered her a small obeisance, too much for a nod but not quite a bow, before turning to take his leave from her salon. She noted, not for the first time, that were she ever to wrestle him into appropriate attire, he would be the sensation of the court.

“I wish you could have known them, my darling,” she murmured to the air.

A warm breeze from the open balcony door brushed her cheek–a whispered caress–and she closed her eyes and smiled.


	39. Bull admires part of Dorian's anatomy

The tiny lacquer brush looks ludicrously small in Bull’s large hand, but he dabs at Dorian’s toenails with confident precision. Dorian had balked at Bull’s request at first, but after much cajoling, he’d lain back in bed, book in hand, his feet in Bull’s lap. For all his doubts about Bull’s enjoyment of the activity (or his skill, if he were honest), Dorian can’t deny the easy smile on his lover’s face or the polished appearance of the lacquer. And he finds there’s something to be said for being doted upon without sexual intent.

Until he looks over his book to see Bull gazing at his feet with an expression he can only describe as adoring.

He chuckles. “I didn’t know you had a foot fetish.”

“Not a foot fetish. A your-foot fetish,” Bull clarifies. “Really just a this-one-toe fetish.” He continues his soulful admiration as he tweaks the largest toe on Dorian’s right foot. 

Dorian laughs again. “Of all the body parts my lovers have extolled, that particular toe has somehow escaped notice.”

“That’s a damn shame,” Bull sighs with mock despair.

“And why, pray tell, is that toe so worthy of devotion?”

When Bull looks up at him, he wears a sly smirk, like Dorian knows exactly why, and Dorian feels his cheeks warm.

He does know. He’s known since his very first orgasm. Through some quirk of his anatomy, just before he reaches climax, the largest toe of his right foot twitches in a spasm of its own. He’s never thought anything of it, certainly never expected a lover to notice. But from Bull’s knowing grin, his current lover has, in fact, noticed.

“Yeah,” Bull coos, looking back at the appendage in question. “It’s a good toe.” Before Dorian can react, Bull’s swipes two small streaks of black lacquer on the skin. “Look! He’s got a mustache!”

Dorian sputters in fond exasperation, but Bull just continues his appreciation. “You love my dick, don’t you, big guy?” he says to the toe before kissing the tip. He glances up at Dorian, waggling his eyebrow. “Maybe we should introduce them.”

Dorian’s wordless scoffing escalates to coughing. “Bull!” he chides. “What a- That’s- Honestly, what an idea!”

“Oh, so that wasn’t you with your foot on my crotch under the dinner table last night?” Bull asks, all innocence.

Dorian’s cheeks flush hotter. “That was… hmph.” He flops back against the pillows, book on his chest, arms folded.

“Yeah,” Bull purrs again, though Dorian knows he’s not talking to him. Or all of him anyway. “That’s a good toe.”


	40. Bull gives Dorian a gift

When Bull handed over the velvet pouch with the little glass bottle inside, Dorian’s smile turned soft and sweet in a way Bull hardly ever saw in public, let alone in the middle of a crowded Val Royeaux market. Shit, he would have laid down twice as much coin to get a glimpse of that smile.

“What’s this?” Dorian murmured, hands cradling the pouch.

“A little something I picked up,” Bull replied.

Gray eyes looked up at him, and a hint of heat warmed up that soft expression. Damn. Maybe three times as much coin.

“Any particular occasion?” Dorian purred.

“Just looking after you,” Bull replied. His hand itched to curl around Dorian’s shoulder, but he didn’t want to jeopardize the relaxed ease with which Dorian had sauntered through the market. The man was with in his element, seeing, being seen, and Bull savored every second.

Dorian chuckled. “Next you’ll start lumping me in with ‘your boys,’” he said. He reached into the pouch, pulled out the bottle…

And instantly went stiffer than a Chantry brother at an orgy. His relaxed air vanished, and his hands trembled as he shoved the bottle back inside the pouch. He thrust it at Bull’s chest, barely waiting for Bull to fumble it into his own hands before turning and stalking off.

“Shit,” Bull muttered. He followed at a short distance as Dorian maneuvered his way through the throng, his chin still high but his shoulders tense. Bull waited until the crowd thinned, then hustled forward to touch Dorian’s elbow. He got a blistering glare for his trouble, but when he tilted his head toward a nearby alley, Dorian marched over to it with his lips pressed into a thin line.

“You’re pissed,” Bull noted once they’d reached the relative privacy of the alley.

“Of course I am!” Dorian threw up a hand in exasperation. “Who the hell hands someone a bottle of…” His eyes darted to the alley entrance, and he lowered his voice. “… _lubrication_ in the middle of a crowded marketplace?”

Bull raised his eyebrow. “You mean the same marketplace that sells lube from a dozen different stalls?”

An angry flush suffused Dorian’s cheeks. “Seeing it on display is one thing. Actually buying it and _parading_ it out in the open is something else.”

“Right,” Bull said, crossing his arms. “Next time I’ll leave out the trumpets.”

A muscle in Dorian’s jaw twitched. The bitter laugh that escaped his clenched teeth pierced Bull right in the chest. “Yes. Make a joke of it. Of me. Why should you care how I feel?”

He stepped forward to push past Bull. The hand that had longed to touch Dorian all day shot out and grabbed him by the arm, not squeezing but firm. When Dorian glared up again, Bull for once didn’t control his expression, didn’t hide any part of the hurt he felt. Dorian’s eyes widened, and then he sagged, all the anger drained out of him.

“That’s wasn’t fair,” he murmured. “Not after all the patience you’ve shown me. I apologize.”

“Accepted,” Bull said. He stepped closer until his hand could shift to rub circles between Dorian’s shoulder blades. Something tight and tense loosened in his gut when Dorian leaned into the touch. “And I’m sorry too. I fucked up with this. I get it.”

Dorian shook his head, but his eyes didn’t lift from Bull’s chest. “No, I… You’re right. No one here cares in the slightest what we do. But I can’t just turn off the effects of a lifetime of being shamed.”

Bull rested gentle fingers against Dorian’s jaw. “No one expects you to.” He shrugged. “You just seem a lot more comfortable lately. Has anyone in our crew not pried into what we get up to?” 

Dorian let out a soft snort before looking up. “Blackwall perhaps.” He sighed. “It’s easier with them. They care for us.”

As Bull lowered his hand, he felt his brow furrow, and he forced it smooth. “So the opinions of strangers you’ll probably never see again matter more than the opinions of the people who care about you?”

“No!” Dorian huffed. “It’s not…” He cut himself short to take a deep breath. “In Skyhold, people are… happy for us. When they see us or think of us, it’s with acceptance. Even fondness.” He looked back toward the boulevard beyond the alley. “If the people here were to think of us, it would only be with disgust or titillation.”

His gaze came back to meet Bull’s. “I don’t want that. I don’t want any of that to touch…” He gestured between them. “This.”

Bull nodded slowly. He still thought no one in Val Royeaux would give a fennec’s dick about what he and Dorian did, but it meant something that Dorian wasn’t just protecting himself. He was protecting them. What they had. Which meant he thought it was worth protecting.

A smile spread across Bull’s face to match the warmth he felt in his chest. “So you’re still gonna sit in my lap at the Rest?”

Dorian’s cheeks pinked again, but he rolled his eyes. “Of course, you great oaf.”

“Can I give you the lube there?” Bull asked. “It’s the fancy kind you like,” he added. “You know, the kind you’ve been moaning about running out of for the past month and a half.”

“Yes, fine.” Dorian waved his hand with a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose I’ll allow you to give me expensive gifts.”

“So magnanimous,” Bull murmured as he bent down to steal a kiss. Dorian didn’t even look to the street before kissing him back.


	41. Dorian gets burned

In some cases, “searing pain” wasn’t just a poetic turn of phrase. Dorian had hoped to never find himself in one of those cases, but as the dragon turned in his direction and stretched her jaws, he knew his hopes had counted for nothing.

A wall of heat, nearly solid in its intensity, preceded the jet of fire that erupted from the creature’s maw. The shockwave toppled Dorian, and he sprawled across the ground on his front. He curled into a tight ball on instinct, and even as flames scorched the ground around him, even as smoke burned his nostrils, for one moment, he thought he had escaped, that the slight depression he’d fallen into had been just enough to shield him.

Then the smoke changed to the acrid scent of burnt leather and the sweeter smell of charred flesh. The nerves along his bowed back shook off their shock and registered the damage that had been done.

He opened his mouth to scream, but he couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. As a sentient, thinking entity, he had ceased to exist. Rational thought could not contend with pure animal sensation.

Something fell across his back, beating at the ruined skin, but he had reached his limits for processing pain and fell gratefully into darkness.

Bull’s voice pulled him back again.

“No,” it snapped. “There. More.”

Nausea, thick and cloying, choked Dorian, and he coughed. His body shook with it, and his back lit up with pain. Most of it hovered at a distance, somehow kept at bay, but a spot below his right shoulder ignited in agony. He cried out with a gasping, ragged sound.

“Bull.” A woman’s voice, as sharp as Bull’s had been, a tone of warning.

Bull didn’t respond. Instead a heavy hand came to rest on the back of Dorian’s neck. He sobbed at the touch, expecting comfort, but the fingers dug deep, holding him down. Liquid trickled from the fingertips, slipped along the line of Dorian’s jaw.

Then the skin of his shoulder was ripped from his flesh.

Bull spoke again, but Dorian couldn’t hear it over his own howling. Nothing remained of him but raw, exposed nerve.

When the pain began to subside, slow as a reluctant tide, his first thought was death, that he felt the leech of his soul from its battered cage. But he could still feel the hard-packed earth below his cheek, and the hand that had held him down stroked through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“We get it all?” Bull’s voice asked, quieter now but still tense.

Seconds passed, and Dorian could hear only his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

“Yeah.” A third voice, stiff as well, out of place when not spinning a sprawling tale. “Yeah, it’s all off.” A chuckle that sounded more like a sigh. “Shit, Sparkler, you need some armor with less leather and metal.”

“That’s the last of the salve,” the woman–the Inquisitor–said. A tickling sensation Dorian hadn’t even noticed left off, and he heard the tink of an empty glass bottle hitting the ground.

“He’s ready for a potion now anyway,” Bull replied. A thick arm burrowed under Dorian’s chest, and he clung to it as it levered him upright to his knees. A smaller hand tilted his chin up, and through his daze, Dorian felt a flask pressed to his lips. He drank greedily, gulping down the potion, savoring the coolness flowing over his parched throat.

When he was finished, he sagged against the arm that held him. It shifted, reaching down to curl around his hip, and another hand came up to guide his head toward a broad shoulder. He burrowed into Bull’s chest, breathing through the last vestiges of draining pain.

“I got you,” Bull murmured, and Dorian felt a kiss pressed to his temple. “I got you, kadan.”

Dorian shifted his head, turning his face to squint up at the horned shadow blocking the bright afternoon sun.

“Bull?” he rasped.

Fingertips caressed the side of his face. “Yeah?”

“I despise dragons.”

Bull’s chuckle vibrated through everywhere Dorian pressed against him. “I’m not so fond of them right now either, kadan.”


	42. Dorian tries qunari spice

Curled into a ball, sweat-drenched and trembling, Dorian could do little more than glare over the side of the bed.

“I hate you,” he announced, but weakly because the cool cloth Bull pressed against his brow felt a great deal like the grace of Andraste herself.

From his seat on the floor, Bull chuckled, quiet as well, without a hint of mockery. “I told you not to eat it.”

“You ate it,” Dorian accused, then suppressed a moan of relief as Bull shifted the cloth to the back of his neck.

“Yeah, but I’m a qunari, not one of you puny humans.”

“I will fiercely contradict that when my insides aren’t attempting to immolate themselves.”

Bull laughed again as he removed the cloth to dip it into the basin of cool water at his side. “You want to stay here tonight, tough guy?” he asked as he laid the cloth on Dorian’s cheek.

The skin beneath the cloth went warm instead of cool and not just because of the intolerable spice—or perhaps poison would have been the better term for it—provided by a Tal-Vashoth vendor. His visits to Bull’s room had become more frequent of late, almost nightly if he were honest with himself, and once or twice (all right, four times, though it wasn’t as if Dorian paid heed to such things) they had simply talked until the early hours. But he always took his leave before the sky above the mountains lost its velvet cloak of darkness.

When he got no further in an answer than parting his lips, Bull smiled, something kinder and softer than a smirk. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble,” Dorian murmured.

“Nah, you’re fine.” Bull once again draped the cloth along Dorian’s nape so he could scratch his nails across Dorian’s scalp. “Besides,” he added with a grin, “this way you can blame the smell in the privy on me.”

Dorian groaned and turned his face into the mattress. “Only you would be boorish enough to mention that.”

“I’m just impressed you made it. I thought I was going to have to clean a mess off the back stairs.”

Face still hidden, Dorian reached out blindly to smack a thickly muscled arm. A hand caught his and lips briefly touched his knuckles before his fingers were tucked back against his side.

“Get some sleep, Dorian.”

Dorian felt sure he should be indignant—or at least wrestle with a lingering pang of humiliation or with panic about the implications of staying where he was—but the warm hand rubbing circles on his back soothed his roiling stomach, and he found himself sinking into the proffered comfort instead. Bull might tease, but he thought no less of Dorian for his mortal imperfections. What was the illusion of dignity when weighed against a place of respite where someone would care for him?

He heard Bull shift, and then the hints of candlelight that peeked through the bedding winked out. Dorian turned his face to the side to seek out the horned silhouette framed against the torchlit window.

“Bull?”

The hand at his back lengthened its circuit to stroke down his spine. “Right here.”

“Thank you.”

Fingers lingered at his hip in a slow caress and then lifted to smooth Dorian’s hair off his sweaty brow. His eyes fluttered closed, and the gentle touch sent him drifting.

“You’re welcome.”


	43. Dorian tries a new term of endearment

The first time seemed almost accidental, Dorian fuzzy with sleep and curled in the divot Bull had left in the mattress. Bull had already gone a few rounds with the boys, and he’d come back to their room to grab a cloth from the washbasin and wipe away the sweat from his chest and armpits.

“You getting up today, big guy?” he asked with a smirk.

“A few more minutes, kadan,” Dorian mumbled. Then he turned into the pillow, leaving Bull to gape at the back of his head.

Something inside of him had gone very quiet. It wasn’t adrenaline, his heart didn’t skip a beat, but some place deeper, some place that had felt sick on Seheron, fell still.

When a light snore cut through the sudden silence, Bull shook himself. He headed to the door, intending to hunt down some breakfast, with only a single glance back.

* * *

The next time was a few days later, in the library, Dorian tucked in his chair, scowling at old books like they’d personally wronged him. Bull chuckled to himself before he snatched the latest volume from Dorian’s hands, making sure to mark the page with one finger.

“Cards later?” he asked.

“Later,” Dorian agreed with a hiss as he grabbed the book back. Once his face was buried in the pages, he added, “You are a terrible nuisance, kadan, and I don’t know why I put up with it.”

The cover of the book shielded all but the top of his forehead, but from what little Bull could see, he’d gone slightly pink.

* * *

Later then, cards on the table, tankards, empty and full, stacked around like the books in the library. Dorian sprawled, the toe of his boot sliding with gentle purpose up and down Bull’s calf.

“I believe the bet is yours, kadan,” he said to Bull without looking up from his cards. He licked a finger, slow and deliberate, before selecting a card and shifting it in his hand.

“Wuzzat then?” Sera piped up, drink-bleary eyes narrowed. “What’s that word?”

“Qunlat,” Bull replied. His gaze stayed on the suits in his hand as well. “Means ‘one who’s hung like a druffalo.’”

Sera cackled, her hand slapping the table and upsetting her flagon. Blackwall snorted beside her as he caught it and set it upright.

“Are we playing cards or learning more than we want to know about Tiny’s anatomy?” Varric drawled.

“By far the most inaccurate nickname of your career, Varric,” Dorian answered. He reordered his cards again as Bull threw his coin on the table.

* * *

Later still, everyone else gone to write (Varric), gone to bed (hopefully Sera with Blackwall’s help), or gone to preserve what was left of their dignity (Cullen). Dorian curled in Bull’s lap, pawing his abs like a cat, fingertips peeking over the top of Bull’s belt. Besides a handful of late-night drinkers, only Cabot was left, grinding a rag into a glass, but even his habitual glare usually kept Dorian in his own seat.

“What’s gotten into you?” Bull asked. “Not complaining, mind.”

“I would think you’d be more concerned with what’s going to _get into me_ ,” Dorian purred in response, and his fingers delved a little deeper. 

“You going to call me ‘kadan’ then too?” 

As he’d expected, Dorian’s light ale-blush darkened, and he eschewed Bull’s gaze in favor of fiddling with his harness. “I’ll stop if you like. My accent’s likely horrible.”

“A little,” Bull teased, and Dorian grimaced. “But no, you don’t need to stop. I like it. I like ‘amatus’ too, but this… it’s nice. I’m just curious why.”

Gray eyes flicked back to his. “At your training session last week, when Krem took that hit, he started swearing in Tevene. Nothing particularly shocking, just the normal expletives you’d hear thrown about the market. It made me feel…”

“Horny?” Bull offered with a wag of his eyebrow.

He got a backhand across the chest for his trouble. “Relaxed. Like a bit of tension I hadn’t known I was holding finally released.” He shrugged, one shoulder, casual, which meant it was anything but. “I thought to give you the same.”

Sweet. Gentle. Caring. All the things Bull knew Dorian was. All the things Dorian would deny. 

The still place inside him flushed warm, then hot. He dragged Dorian up and over his shoulder, kicking the chair out from beneath him. Dorian squawked with a few Tevene curses of his own as Bull headed to the stairs.

“You know another Qunlat word if you want me to stop,” Bull reminded him, one hand on the temptingly wriggling ass beside his head.

Dorian twisted in his grip to murmur “kadan” against his ear, and Bull growled as he bounded up the final steps.


	44. Bull suffers a serious injury

Bull’s blood is slick and red, luridly so against gray skin, and seems to flow in an endless stream. No, not endless. It will end and Bull will end unless Vivienne can close the breach that threatens to swallow Dorian’s world.

Three mages among them and thank the Maker for that. Dorian has never felt so useless. He burned the last of his mana taking the behemoth down, and now he can do nothing but clutch one of Bull’s hands between his own.

“Lie still,” he murmurs to the knuckles pressed to his lips. As if Bull can do anything else. “Let Madame de Fer take care of this little scrape you’ve so carelessly acquired.”

Bull can only grunt in response, whether due to the pain or the force of the barrier holding him down. His eye clings to Dorian like a drowning man to driftwood.

“Yes, careless,” Dorian chides. He tries to keep his voice light, but a waver slips through. “You’re to leave every battle in one piece. Anything else is simply unacceptable.”

“Darling,” Vivienne interjects to the Inquisitor, and the weariness in her voice is equal to anyone else collapsing into a sobbing heap. “I’m going to need you to finish here.”

As Elette slides to take Vivienne’s place at Bull’s side, her barrier weakens. For a moment, Bull writhes, bootheels churning the ground in an involuntary spasm. Dorian releases his hand to curl his arms around Bull’s horns and bury his face in Bull’s jaw. Beneath him, Bull locks his muscles in place by sheer force of will.

Gradually, so gradually each second feels a lifetime, the tension in Bull’s body eases. Dorian feels the moment Elette relinquishes her hold on the Fade, and Bull’s chest continues to rise and fall. Dorian relaxes his desperate grip and props himself up on hands buried in the soil on either side of Bull’s head.

“There are better ways to get me atop you, amatus.” An easy joke, the one Bull would have made if he had the strength.

As it is, Bull manages to huff a laugh, and then he lifts a hand to wipe the tears from Dorian’s eyes.


	45. Dorian reacts to the shovel talk

They’re all deep in their cups and Bull has gone to buy the next round or surely no one would have said it.

Dorian’s not sure where it starts.

_Treat him good, ’Vint, or you’ll answer to us._

Laughter. Concurring knocks on the table. Elbows jabbed into ribs.

Dorian is suddenly, deeply sober. Across the table, Krem goes very still. Their eyes cross paths and then separate as the good-natured jibes continue, and Dorian can see that Bull’s lieutenant knows the truth as well as he.

His time with Bull is running short, as it was always meant to do. There are others in the wings, waiting to bask in the generous heat of Bull’s desire. Dorian knows it. Krem as well. That the other Chargers don’t only leaves Dorian feeling more weighted by the knowledge, as if their disappointment will be his fault instead of inevitable.

Like Bull’s leaving.

He stands, abruptly. Gazes turn to him, brows furrowed in question, quips dying. He makes polite excuse, but he must not be at this table when Bull returns or he will be tempted to… to…

He goes to his room alone, lights flickering candles that do little to illuminate its dreary corners. When Bull had first entered, it had seemed too small to hold him. Now it seems too large without him. That Bull has not yet let him down (gently, it will be so gently) does not seem to matter in that dingy space.

He doesn’t so much startle at the knock as cringe. Krem has doubtless sent Bull to him with quickly murmured words, a figuratively merciful dagger.

_Make it quick._

He does not expect Bull to gaze down at him with tenderness nor offer a rueful chuckle. Krem _has_ sent him, but with words more biting and meant to cut them both.

_A pair of assholes. Blind, stupid assholes._

Bull replaces Dorian’s preemptive longing with drawn-out sighs and strong hands and murmured words of his own.

_Kadan, kadan, kadan…_

When the Chargers tease again, Bull laughs, Krem smirks behind his wine, and Dorian smiles as he tells them not to worry.


	46. Hissrad faces the inevitable

As they storm the Darvaarad, Hissrad knows: this is the day he will die.

Because he is Hissrad, he buries this truth. He covers it in The Iron Bull’s laughter and jeers and camaraderie. He wraps it carefully in larger truths. Duty. The Qun. All the ties that bound his hands when he could have raised a horn to his lips.

He does not think of the rightness of the Inquisition’s cause. He does not think of the impossibility of his own survival.

_Asit tal-eb._ It is to be.

They reach the gaatlock factory. Viddasala commands. Hissrad obeys. The battle begins.

He will have a handful of moments when the Inquisition forces are unbalanced by shock and betrayal, moments when he can enact the plans that have lived in his head for years in anticipation of this moment. He knows their strengths. He knows their weaknesses. This close-quarters combat has been bred into his sinew and bone and brain. He steadies his ax. He remembers his training.

Go for the mage first.

He turns to find his target. He and Dorian appraise each other across the field, two statues in a frothing sea. Dorian’s blank face shows nothing, reveals nothing, and Hissrad feels a fierce stab of pride. But Dorian holds his gaze for too long. Sten charges up behind him, sword at the ready. When Dorian turns to counter the attack, his back is bared to Hissrad. Hissrad pulls the knife from his belt, cocks it back, and lets it fly.

The blade embeds itself between Sten’s eyes.

The shouts around him change, from _bas saarebas_ to _Hissrad_ , but he barely hears. His head pounds with phantom voices.

_Why him? Why not us?_

He does not lift his ax again.

_Asit tal-eb_ , he tells the voices. _This is the day I die._

He waits for death, idly curious which of the two forces will do the job. When he feels the tingle of a magical barrier wash over him, when flames engulf his brothers and sisters around him, when the battle ends, he lowers himself to his knees. Silence falls. Next will come the sword. Or chains, though that thought chills him.

Instead he feels fingertips brush his jaw.

“Bull?” a choked voice murmurs.

Hissrad shakes his head. But he is not Hissrad.

“Amatus,” the voice tries again.

To this he nods. He is not dead, not yet, so he will breathe for his kadan. The heart inside his chest has cracked.

_Asit tal-eb._ It is to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Nele](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nele/pseuds/Nele#_=_) did [art](http://fanjapanologist.tumblr.com/post/150455872613/hissrad-and-dorian-sketch-for-this-ficlet) for this ficlet!


	47. Dorian when the Chargers return from a job

When the horn signaling the Chargers’ return sounds, Dorian’s lips twitch upward, but he makes no other move. He reads to the end of the page, making sure to absorb every word. He then places a strip of leather to mark his spot and, with deliberate care, settles the book atop the stack beside his chair. He stands, stretches, and turns to the window, anticipation a hum just below his skin. Through the glass, he sees Bull’s giant black destrier pawing the ground.

Riderless.

He darts from his alcove, toppling the stack of books. He doesn’t stop to right them, nor to answer the startled question Solas makes of his name as he hurtles through the rotunda. He barely registers passing through the main hall, eyes fixed on the sunlight of the entrance. He almost trips on the stairs when he sees Stitches and Skyhold’s surgeon racing across the courtyard, a litter carried between them. They stop beside a cart, possibly borrowed, likely stolen, tethered to Rocky’s shaggy mountain pony.

Above the sides of the cart, Dorian sees Bull’s horns first. They point skyward, and Dorian’s breath catches in relief. But beneath them, Bull’s face is downcast and grim. Perhaps his leg has finally given out for good? But no, he slides out of the cart to stand beside it on his own two feet, one hand gripping the wood with unfiled claws. 

The healers push past him, and within moments, they are hurrying back to the keep. Dorian gets only a glimpse of Krem, pale and swaddled in bandages. Crimson whorls stain the linen, like someone’s embroidered it with blood-red thread.

Dorian hesitates when he reaches Bull, but then his lover reaches out a beseeching hand, the other still clamped on the cart’s frame. Heedless of the bustling courtyard around them, Dorian lets himself be drawn into Bull’s broad chest and tucked beneath Bull’s chin.

“He’ll be all right,” Bull murmurs, as if Dorian is the one who needs reassurance. Around him, the strong arm trembles. “He’ll be all right.”


	48. Dorian and Bull dance at the Winter Palace

As soon as they return to their room, Bull sprawls across the bed, heedless of the grime on his skin. Dorian doesn’t even object. Dirtying the linens in Skyhold is one thing—fresh ones are in short supply and the washing staff’s time is better spent cleaning blood from uniforms—but this is the Winter Palace. The Empress likely wipes her ass with silk and blows her nose on the damask curtains.

In occasional moments, Dorian misses that kind of luxury. But as he flops on the bed beside Bull and a strong arm curves around his shoulders and pulls him into a broad chest, he smiles. He’s made sacrifices, yes, but there have been compensations.

He’s close to dozing when the muscles beneath his cheek tense. Bull spits out a curse and fumbles his arm out from under Dorian. He sits up, hunched, and both hands clutch his left thigh.

Dorian is up in a moment, alert and awake. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Leg’s locking up,” Bull manages through a grimace.

Sliding from the bed, Dorian kneels at Bull’s feet. He pulls off his boot, sock, and brace and rolls up the cuff of Bull’s trousers. The scarred calf bulges with visible spasms, and Dorian winces. Magic warms his hands, and he lays them on Bull’s skin, one at the knee, one on the muscle gone hard as rock. He doesn’t move them, not yet, and barely applies any pressure as he listens to Bull breathe heavily through his nose.

After a few long minutes, Bull’s breaths ease, and he groans as he straightens his knee experimentally. The joint clicks and pops, and when Dorian helps Bull flex his ankle, a second chorus of damaged cartilage joins in a disturbing harmony.

“Better keep it moving for a bit,” Bull grunts. “I’ll take a walk or something.”

He goes to push off the side of the bed and would have hit the floor if not for Dorian’s arm around his waist.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs.

“Shit,” Bull says, taking a firmer grip on Dorian’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Dorian replies. He shifts his feet to stand facing Bull, hand still at Bull’s hip, moving slowly to ensure Bull can keep his feet. “Except perhaps for failing to ask me to dance tonight.”

Bull huffs a laugh. “Thought about it. Got distracted by the spiced nuts.”

“You’re terrible, and I hate you,” Dorian announces.

“They were good nuts, kadan.”

Dorian looks up at him through his eyelashes. “Better than mine?” he purrs.

Bull’s next laugh is a loud guffaw. “Not a chance. Damn, I need to work on my priorities.”

“Indeed,” Dorian agrees.

With Bull in his arms, he begins to sway a bit, just side to side at first. When Bull’s leg doesn’t falter, Dorian takes Bull’s free hand in his and shuffles half a step back. Bull follows, a slow smile spreading. Dorian keeps his steps even and short, guiding Bull through an abbreviated waltz. No string quartet plays; no onlookers gaze on in admiration of their grace. The smell of sweat and dried blood perfumes their skin. But Bull’s fingers are warm in his, and they’ve suffered no worse tonight than a stiff leg. It’s enough. It’s more than enough.

They end near the fireplace, and the flickering flames paint Bull’s face in tender light and sweet shadows as he looks down at Dorian. The lines of stress and pain have eased from beside his eye.

“Are you all right?” Dorian asks.

“Yeah, kadan,” Bull replies, lifting Dorian’s knuckles to his lips. “I’m good.”


	49. Bull saves Dorian in battle

Battle rage crystallized time into moments that rose and fell in waves. A moment to kill, a moment to pivot, a moment to engage a new enemy. A moment to kill, a moment to pivot, a moment to engage a new enemy. A moment to kill… 

A moment to feel the engulfing warmth of Dorian’s barrier wink out. A moment to hear the boss shout. A moment to feel her buzzing barrier crawl up sinew and skin instead. A moment to turn and see Dorian on his knees, clinging to his staff and clutching at his gut. A moment to run. A moment to turn aside a Red Templar blade.

A moment to kill.

The fight ended, receding in a tide. Bull dropped to a crouch beside Dorian (his leg moved easily, everything moved easily in battle, pain came later). “How bad?” he asked, and his voice came out in a rough-edged growl.

Dorian glanced up at him, still breathing hard. “Not bad. Just… unexpected.” He slumped back to sit on the ground, and as his hand moved from his abdomen, it came away clean. He wiped it over his face.

“So that’s what a Smite with intent feels like,” he sighed. “Cullen’s underlings have been gentle with me.” He glanced at the templar’s corpse, and his brow furrowed with distaste. “I suppose I should thank you.”

Bull grunted. Weariness descended like a sunset on the ocean, creeping and then sudden. “It’s my job.”

“Be that as it may,” Dorian replied. “I rather enjoy my insides on the inside.”

“You can buy me a drink when we get back to civilization,” Bull said.

Dorian huffed a laugh. “This is the south. There is no civilization.”

“True,” Bull said with a faint smile. He held out a hand to help Dorian, but the other man hauled himself up with his staff. Bull grunted again as he pushed to his feet. His ankle gave out, and he stumbled a step. Dorian steadied him with a hand on his bicep, a hand that lingered even once Bull found solid footing. His smile stretched a little wider at the way Dorian’s eyes stared at his own splayed hand, not quite wide enough to span the muscle. Bull flexed, just a little, and Dorian snatched his hand back, cheeks going pink.

He covered it with a sniff. “You’re filthy.”

“That happens when you’re in the middle of a fight instead of standing on the side.” Bull reached into his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. He extended it to Dorian with two fingers, and after a moment of glaring at the square of pristine linen, Dorian took it and wiped his hand. 

When he gave it back, his gaze followed Bull’s hand back to his pocket. “Wondering what else I’ve got in these pants?” Bull asked as he shook the loose fabric.

Dorian’s eyes rolled with exaggerated disdain. “And I had almost begun to think of you as more than a terrible beast. More fool I.”

“Can’t have that,” Bull agreed. “What would the neighbors say?”

“Nothing they haven’t said before,” Dorian replied. They began the slow walk to join with the others, Dorian leaning on his staff and Bull limping. “You’d barely rate as a salacious tidbit.”

“Damn,” Bull sighed. “Where’s the fun if you can’t be a major scandal?”

“If you have to ask that, then you’re doing it wrong,” Dorian insisted.

Bull raised an eyebrow and grinned. “‘It’ being?”

A flush of pink colored Dorian’s cheeks again. “Proper society’s games of status and position,” he replied quickly. “Endless entertainment for the whole family.”

“I don’t mind games,” Bull said, watching Dorian from the corner of his eye. “Endless might get a little tedious though.”

“Doesn’t the Qun preach patience?” Dorian parried. “‘It is to be’ and all that?”

Bull snorted. “Yeah. Guess I need to work on that.”

“Don’t we all?” Dorian murmured, half to himself. 

Before Bull could dig into that little comment, the boss reached them, fussing and checking them for injuries and soothing Bull’s bum leg. Dorian threw an arm over Varric’s shoulders, and the pair engaged in an escalating back-and-forth of who had scored the most impressive kill. Bull followed behind them, chuckling along and soaking in Dorian’s laughter.


	50. Dorian is forced to snuggle Bull (oh, Maker, no!)

The sound of fabric flapping woke Dorian, but the sensation of _cold_ and _wet_ had him bolting upright. The wind had ripped one of the tent ropes loose, and the storm that had been raging outside was now raging inside. Specifically all over Dorian’s bedroll.

“Vishante kaffas!” he spat as he rolled over on the damp canvas. He reached out into the pelting rain and fumbled to catch the rope with one hand while the other cast a small wisp of light.

From the far side of the tent, Bull let out a truly majestic snort as he woke.

“What’re you doing, ’Vint?” he muttered as he rubbed a hand down his face.

“I’m having a tea party,” Dorian crowed with false delight. “Do join me. I’m expecting the Empress of Orlais at any moment.”

Bull’s one eye squinted at him in the wisp’s light for a full five seconds before he huffed a laugh and crawled across their bedrolls to help. Between the two of them, they managed to lash the tent down again, but Dorian’s bedroll remained waterlogged. He gazed at it in despair as Iron Bull shuffled back to the far side of the tent.

“Move the party over here,” he said as he lay back. “Might not have room for the empress though.”

“She’ll be terribly put out,” Dorian noted as he climbed over Bull and sprawled beside him in the driest part of the tent. Bull’s blanket lay discarded and crumpled near their feet, but Dorian snatched it up, shook it out, and draped it over both of them. He extinguished the wisp as he burrowed in against Bull’s side.

“Maker, you’re warm,” he murmured, wriggling closer.

“And you’re wet,” Bull pointed out. He grabbed a corner of the blanket and rubbed it up and down Dorian’s bare chest and arms.

“I wouldn’t be if someone had secured the tent properly,” Dorian grumbled.

“Hey, you’re welcome to help with that,” Bull countered as he tucked the blanket back around Dorian. “There’s no rule that says I have to do it _every_ time. And your usual excuse that I’m so much better at it isn’t going to fly if you grouse.”

“So my choice is to either relinquish the right to complain or engage in manual labor?” Dorian asked. “You’re a cruel man.”

“Downright deviant,” Bull agreed on a yawn. “Get some sleep, ’Vint. We’ll dry out your stuff in the morning.”

“Lovely. We’ll just stew in the miasma of wet wool until then.”

“Could be worse,” Bull muttered.

“How exactly?”

“That soup Sera cooked up had a hell of a lot of beans.” In the renewed dark, Dorian could _hear_ Bull’s smirk.

“Andraste’s ass,” he chided, slapping a hand against Bull’s chest. “If you break wind, I’m sending you out into the rain.”

“If I really let go, you’ll be racing me to get out into the rain.”

“Vishante kaffas,” Dorian cursed again as he hid his face in Bull’s shoulder. He absolutely was not smiling. “Cruel _and_ crude, that’s what you are.”

“You like it.” As Bull tucked his arm more securely around Dorian’s shoulders, he pressed a kiss into his hair.

Dorian humphed. He could only imagine what his younger self would think if he could see Dorian now. Camping in the backwoods of Ferelden in the pouring rain with a large, unwashed qunari while being rather ripe himself. A young Dorian Pavus would likely swoon of shame.

And the older (and hopefully wiser, but who could say?) Dorian would only laugh, revive him with a tankard of ale, and inform him that there were far worse ways to spend the hours before dawn.


	51. Varric contemplates his next novel

The quickest way to write a marketable romance novel was to follow the conventions of the genre. Boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl finally give into passion (complete with heaving bosoms and throbbing manhoods), and then they live happily ever after.

Convention was all well and good, but it got boring fast. The trick to not falling asleep at your own writing table was to throw in a twist now and then. Boy meets boy or girl meets girl—always good. Boy (or girl) meets boy (or girl) meets girl (or boy)—great if you could pull it off, though slightly more complicated in the logistics. Boy meets girl but has sworn himself to Andraste so chaste embraces replace wild sex—those flew off the shelves among the Chantry sisters (mostly so they could hide other books inside).

Throw in racial tensions and magic and you really had something. The Dalish first and the templar. The former slave and the leader of the mage underground. The dwarven Grey Warden and the human who would be king. People ate that shit up.

But in all his decades of writing, Varric had never come close to touching the conflict between Tevinter and Par Vollen. A ’Vint and a qunari? Too unbelievable.

Too unbelievable if you tried to write a pampered, prissy mage who was the son of a magister and a rough and ready Tal-Vashoth warrior who was a mercenary captain.

Unless the pampered mage wasn’t quite so prissy and had zero interest in being the son of a magister. Unless the Tal-Vashoth mercenary didn’t start out Tal-Vashoth or mercenary. Unless the mage had more common sense than you’d expect. Unless the warrior had more brains. Unless they both had more heart than their homelands knew what to do with.

Then you had something.

Then you had soft looks over the campfire and tying off each other’s bandages. You still had rippling muscles aplenty (even a decently heaving bosom), but you also had a guiding hand at the small of the other’s back. You had tears on the battlefield and laughter in the bedroom. You had fingers clawing the sheets _and_ candlelight and gentle blushes.

By the time the Inquisition’s story ended, the Tal-Vashoth mercenary really was a Tal-Vashoth mercenary and the magister’s son… well, he was a magister in his own right. In the book, they would ride off into the sunset together, ready to remake the newly healed world.

But reality is rarely as kind as fiction, and in life, the star-crossed lovers didn’t quite get their constellations to align. They went their separate ways, a pair of crystals chosen as the stars to lead them by.

So the book ended while the story went on. And you had something then too.

A sequel.


	52. Soulmark AU

Qunari do not have soulmarks. Tevinter propaganda attributes the fact to their “brutish” physiology, but five minutes of conversation with any Vashoth would dispel that notion. Young Dorian has never met a Vashoth, is only vaguely aware of the meaning of the term, but too many of his tutor’s hidden stash of romance novels mention it for it not to have at least _some_ truth.

Some of the more progressive research on the topic (hidden beneath even the romances in Master Fasteri’s trunk) suggests that early indoctrination to the Qun somehow suppresses the soulmark. A fascinating theory, to be sure, but somewhat lost on Dorian as he eagerly awaits the appearance of his soulmate’s name upon his own skin. He checks each night, heart pounding when he finds a new dark freckle, wondering if it will bloom to something more, something _special_. His parents are anxious as well, though they inquire with serious expressions and another speech about his duty on their tongues.

The years pass, and he enters the Circle. When the other boys in the dormitory speak in bragging tones (those with the name of an acceptable female of equal rank) or hushed whispers (those with the name of a laeta or praetera), he buries his nose in his textbooks. Some of the other boys stay silent as well, though he knows it may not be for the same reason. Some alti are shamed with the name of a soporata; he’s even heard rumors of an older boy with the name of a _slave_ on his wrist.

One night a gang of his classmates surround a boy less popular and less talented than Dorian. With the fierce cruelty of the young and pampered, they tug at his trousers until he stumbles, fabric curled around his knees, the unmistakably _male_ name standing out in dark letters on his thigh. A silence falls over the room before the taunts begin. The boy staggers out into the corridor, chased by the abuse, and Dorian slinks more deeply under his coverlet.

His hunted classmate never returns. Perhaps having no name is not such a horrible fate. Perhaps Dorian is meant for better things, a higher purpose, from which a soulmate would only distract him. He wraps his forged truth tightly around himself when the longing ache in his chest threatens to prickle at his eyes.

As his education progresses, his successes mount, and his world becomes so much larger when he becomes Alexius’s apprentice. Magical theory sings in his agile brain, and _here_ is a higher purpose, here is something that touches the very fabric of the cosmos, and his crafted defense against loneliness does not feel so far-fetched after all.

His world abruptly shrinks when his father drags him back to a locked room. After that, he has less concern for soulmates than for survival.

The Inquisition again answers his need for something _more_. If he cannot have a soulmate, if no other half of himself awaits him, then saving the world will have to do.

In this small way (and sometimes he thinks in only this small way), he begins to understand The Iron Bull. The massive qunari flirts and boasts and fucks his way through life, but no blackened letters appear among his many scars. He enjoys his friends, enjoys his lovers, but his inner being is tied to something else. When Dorian goes to him, then continues to go to him, he savors the easy freedom they share. Nothing forces them to intimacy, and one word will end what they have.

And then… well, and then he finds his desire to speak that word lessen. He makes no mention, of course. What good would it do? What place do the words “I wish” have in the diminishing space between them? The warmth in his chest, in his body, when he lies curled in Bull’s arms is more than enough.

(But when he watches Meraad and Cassandra spar, when the Vashoth woman’s thin shirt rides up and Dorian catches a glimpse of “Rai” disappearing into the waistband at the small of her back, he can’t help but wonder.

If one’s soulmate were a qunari, would one also bear no mark?

Contrariwise, if one’s lover had been born Vashoth…

He pushes the thought deep down, hides it away in the place where he once hid other questionable thoughts. Those thoughts have since been freed to the open air–some with Bull’s help–so he has plenty of room to spare.)

Then they travel to the Storm Coast. Then a dreadnaught explodes before their eyes. In the uncharacteristic silence of their tent, Dorian’s heart breaks for the man in the bedroll beside him. For once, they do not touch beyond the clasp of hands. But when Bull clings to his fingers so tightly Dorian can feel the joints creak, oh, he _wishes_ again. Wishes he could offer something more to Bull. Wishes he could write his own name across the gray skin with tender kisses and whispered words.

The next morning, as they take down their tent, Bull hisses in pain and slaps a hand to the back of his neck, and suddenly every spark of Dorian’s awareness goes absolutely still. When Bull lowers his hand, sneering at the streak of blood and the mangled insect body that he wipes on his trousers, some small flicker that Dorian had thought long extinguished dies a second death.

(When Meraad sits in her throne of judgment, when the man they now know as _Rai_ nier stands hunched before her, Dorian thinks perhaps they are the lucky ones.)

Regardless, he and Bull choose and choose and choose, past even Corypheus’s defeat, and each day, each night, they choose each other.

So years later, in the moment after Viddasala issues her command, Dorian thinks of nothing but the wrenching twist he can almost feel in his lover’s chest. After the battle, after Meraad staggers back through the eluvian, one arm gone and betrayal written in every line of her scowl, he thinks of nothing but getting his friend to rest and safety. Her anger carries her far; she doesn’t collapse into Bull’s arms until their camp is in sight, and Dorian is reminded of that horrible night in Haven.

As he and Bull sit side by side near the campfire, wordless in their weariness, Dorian feels a sharp sting in his right hip. He rubs it absently, then glances down but sees no blood upon his clothing. He has just lifted a hand to undo the top of his robe to check for an unnoticed wound, when Bull’s voice stops him.

“Got any poultices on you?” his lover asks.

He glances over, taking in the slight grimace of pain tightening the lines of Bull’s mouth. “You’re hurt?”

Bull grunts his assurance. “Just feels like I got a scratch or something,” he says as he angles one thumb over his shoulder toward his broad back.

Dorian reaches into the pack beside him and pulls out one of Stitches’s vellum-wrapped concoctions. With a sigh for his aching muscles and the growing burn in his hip, he pushes to his feet and steps over the log serving as their makeshift seat. He tugs his handkerchief from his pocket, prepared to wipe away Bull’s blood yet again, wondering if a day will ever come when bandaging each other’s injuries is not such a large part of their relationship.

He lifts the handkerchief… and freezes.

There is no blood, though the skin between Bull’s shoulder blades is red and slightly puffy. With trembling fingers, Dorian reaches out to the swollen tissue, and as he traces the letters carved there, the new mark darkens to black and the irritation fades, as though the words had been there all along.

Bull lets out a soft sigh, then smiles over his shoulder. “You been practicing healing?”

Dorian can’t answer. Trembling in every limb, he steps forwards, trips over the log, would have fallen facefirst into the fire if not for Bull’s steadying arm. He hears Bull say his name, worry in his tone, but Dorian focuses on pulling and ripping at the _Maker-damned_ buckles of his armor. When he finally tears the outer robe from his shoulders and shoves the waist of his trousers down to his hips, he hears Bull laugh.

The laugh cuts off in a choked gasp as they both see the three words burned into Dorian’s hip (of course three words, of course _The_ appears as well, and a strangled huff of laughter escapes Dorian’s lips). With a hand shaking even harder than Dorian’s, Bull reaches out, and as his fingertips brush the mark, the pain flares and fades, sinking into a deep warmth that reaches Dorian’s very bones.

The warmth bubbles up inside him, releasing in another laugh and tears in his eyes. He will leave; he will go to Tevinter alone. _But he will go with his soulmate’s mark upon him._

His arms jump up to wrap around Bull’s neck, but he stills his movement as he takes in Bull’s parted lips, the wide eye staring at the name written on Dorian’s body. He remembers the quiet denial Bull had spoken to Viddasala, the final answer to the question posed by Gatt years before.

“Amatus?” he murmurs. “Are you all right?”

Bull’s grasp on Dorian’s hip tightens just a bit, just enough to dimple the marked skin. Dorian’s heart seems to leap to his throat, drop to his stomach, stutter and pound, all at the same time. The air feels trapped in his lungs, like he is drowning, like he may never breathe again.

The last of his voice trickles out in a quiet, questioning noise, and he sees the effort it takes for Bull to tear his gaze away from his own name. For a moment they are locked together, stunned and breathless on the precipice of this new life. Then the grip on his hip becomes an arm clutching his waist, and he tumbles into Bull’s lap. Scarred lips touch his, once, twice, then again and again, deepening and searching and filling Dorian with a heat he can feel to his toes and that has become so much more precious to him than air.

When they do finally part, panting, lungs aching, air is the only thing that can squeeze between them. Dorian can feel Bull’s lips against his skin as he hears the first words of his soulmate.

“Never better, kadan.”


End file.
